Business Intelligence Architect

***MUST CURRENTLY RESIDE IN IL.***

Overview

This is a hands-on senior technical role that owns the design integrity of our BI environment — the gold (reporting) layer of our warehouse, the semantic (Tabular) models that power Power BI and Fabric, and the DAX and report standards our development team builds to.

This is a builder and standard-bearer role, not a people-management role. You set the technical bar, own the hardest modeling and design decisions, serve as the escalation point for our BI developers and analysts, and provide day-to-day technical direction to two offshore development consultants. You do not manage headcount, staffing, or performance — that sits with the BI manager, who leads the team.

You partner closely with Data Engineering, who deliver clean, conformed data into the silver layer through their ingestion and ETL pipelines. From there, you own the gold (reporting) layer: you write the SQL that shapes that data into the dimensional models our analytics run on. You bring the reporting-modeling judgment that turns well-moved data into a warehouse people can actually analyze.

• What you own
• Own the gold (reporting) layer. Using Kimball methodology, you design and build — in SQL — the gold layer of our Enterprise Data Warehouse: the fact and dimension tables, conformed dimensions, star schemas, and reporting-ready views that sit on top of the silver layer. You write this SQL yourself (complex T-SQL, views, and stored procedures) and performance-tune it. Data Engineering delivers clean, conformed data into silver through their ingestion and ETL pipelines; you transform it into the dimensional model that reporting depends on. You do not build or own the ingestion / ETL pipelines.
• The semantic layer. You design, own, and continuously tune every Tabular semantic model in Power BI Premium and Microsoft Fabric — relationships, storage-mode strategy (Import / DirectQuery / Direct Lake), Row-Level and Object-Level Security, and performance / VertiPaq optimization. You are the single escalation point for all semantic-model issues.
• BI development standards. You establish the standards our developers build to — modeling patterns, naming conventions, DAX patterns, report design, and performance thresholds — and you uphold them through regular, cadenced reviews (not line-by-line review of everything). Our developers write the DAX day-to-day; you set the bar, review on a schedule, resolve escalations, and personally tune the most complex measures and reports.
• Technical direction of two offshore consultants. You assign their work, review their designs and code, and ensure their deliverables meet platform standards.
• Release quality. You author deployment plans with rollback procedures, validation criteria, and dependency mapping across Dev, Test, and Production; you lead postmortems and drive root-cause analysis to closure. (Final release approval rests with the BI manager.)
• Platform compliance and audit readiness. You maintain readiness against HIPAA and enterprise security standards through regular review of Power BI Activity Logs, usage metrics, and user behavior.
• Technical input to platform direction. You provide tool and platform-evolution recommendations that inform the BI manager’s multi-year roadmap and investment decisions. (The manager owns the roadmap and the investment business cases; you supply the technical judgment behind them.)
• Requirements partnership. You gather reporting requirements from business stakeholders, translate them into model designs, and estimate effort.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing and building relational and dimensional data models using Kimball methodology, with a demonstrated track record of shaping data for reporting (not just consuming existing models).
• Expert-level Microsoft SQL Server T-SQL — complex queries, views, and stored procedures — used to build, own, and performance-tune the gold/reporting layer of the warehouse. (This role writes the gold-layer SQL; Data Engineering owns ingestion and ETL for the bronze and silver layers — see “Explicitly not part of this role” below.)
• 5+ years of hands-on Power BI development — semantic model design, advanced DAX, and performance tuning with DAX Studio and Tabular Editor.
• 5+ years with Power BI Datasets / SSAS Tabular, including Row-Level Security and Object-Level Security.
• Hands-on Microsoft Fabric experience (Lakehouse, Warehouse, Direct Lake, OneLake) and sound judgment on when to apply Import, DirectQuery, or Direct Lake.
• Experience with Power BI deployment pipelines, Git source control, and workspace lifecycle management across Dev, Test, and Production.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce technical and business documentation that others can act on independently.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Helpful, but not required (Data Engineering owns the build): familiarity with Azure data-pipeline patterns (Data Lake → Synapse) and SSIS, enough to collaborate effectively.
• MUST BE A US CITIZEN OR GREEN CARD HOLDER! NO 3RD PARTIES AND NO C2C.