Senior BI Front End Architect

Job Description:

Looking for a rewarding career? Johnson Brothers is a leading family-owned distributor of wine, spirits, and beer, delivering exceptional service since 1953. We proudly represent the world’s top beverage brands and are committed to excellence, innovation, and growth. Johnson Brothers offers exciting opportunities in a variety of areas. Join our passionate team and help shape the future of the beverage industry!

Role Summary

The Senior BI Front End Architect designs and implements our enterprise Power BI and Microsoft Fabric platform. You will consolidate multiple reporting environments into a single governed ecosystem, elevate UX/UI through standardized design, and optimize performance across all devices. While focused on front-end architecture, you'll apply deep data acquisition knowledge to ensure semantic models accurately reflect business data from source systems. This individual contributor role actively coaches BI developers to uplift team capabilities.

Primary Responsibilities

Integration & Optimization

• Consolidate existing reporting environments into a cohesive Power BI + Fabric platform (workspaces, semantic models, and apps). 
• Establish front‑end governance: workspace taxonomy, naming standards, deployment pipelines, and versioning.
• Define and enforce the thin report over certified semantic models pattern. 
• Act as the primary liaison between the BI team and Data Engineering, providing requirements for data models and pipelines based on business reporting needs.
• Partner with business stakeholders and analytics teams to identify, prototype, and integrate AI/ML insights into reporting solutions.

UX/UI Evolution

• Create and maintain a design system for Power BI (themes, layout patterns, typography, color, accessibility).
• Standardize navigation (app structure, report landing pages, bookmarks) and mobile‑first layouts.
• Build reusable visual templates and measure libraries to accelerate consistent delivery.

Performance Optimization

• Own report performance: DAX optimization, model sizing, aggregation/Hybrid tables, Incremental Refresh, and Visual/Query reduction.
• Monitor and tune Fabric/Power BI capacity using Capacity Metrics; set SLIs/SLOs for open time and interaction latency.
• Establish performance test gates in CI/CD (Performance Analyzer baselines, dataset refresh thresholds).

Mentorship & Enablement

• Coach BI teams on DAX patterns, modeling, and UX standards; run design and code reviews to ensure consistency across the organization.
• Document standards, anti‑patterns, and “cookbook” guidance for repeatable delivery.

Quality & Governance

• Partner with data engineering to align security (RLS/OLS), lineage, and metadata.
• Implement BI deployment processes including ALM Toolkit, Git, and change management.

Technical Stack & Tools

• Core: Microsoft Fabric, Power BI Desktop/Service, DAX, Power Query (M), Tabular Editor, ALM Toolkit, DAX Studio.
• Data/Integration: Fabric Pipelines & Dataflows Gen2, Azure SQL/Synapse, OneLake, Power BI Deployment Pipelines, Azure DevOps.
• Monitoring & Ops: Power BI/ Fabric Capacity Metrics, Usage Metrics, Purview (lineage), Azure Monitor/Log Analytics.
• UX/Visualization: Power BI themes (JSON), custom visuals governance, accessibility guidelines (WCAG), mobile layout optimizer.

Experience Required

• 8+ years in BI/analytics with 4+ years leading Power BI front‑end architecture at enterprise scale. 
• Proven ability to collaborate with data engineering teams and a strong understanding of end-to-end data acquisition flows from source systems (e.g., ERP, CRM)
• Demonstrated success consolidating disparate BI estates into a unified Fabric/Power BI platform. 
• Deep expertise in DAX performance tuning, model design, UX patterns, and capacity optimization. 
• Hands‑on CI/CD for BI (Git, Deployment Pipelines, ALM Toolkit) and production operations (refresh SLAs, incident handling). 

Stakeholder Interaction

• Translate executive and functional requirements into task‑focused, decision‑ready reporting. 
• Collaborate with data engineering, security, and governance to align modeling, lineage, and access. 
• Conduct design reviews, office hours, and enablement sessions; serve as a trusted advisor to business leaders.

Key Differentiators

• Blends design thinking with technical depth—delivers delightful, consistent experiences without sacrificing performance. 
• Translates complex data from source systems into simple, trusted, and decision-ready insights.
• Proven mentor/coach, raising the bar for front‑end standards and code quality. 
• Mastery of capacity + cost/perf trade‑offs in Fabric/Power BI at scale.

Preferred Certifications or Equivalent Demonstrated Expertise

Certifications aren’t a proxy for capability, but they help validate depth in our stack.
Strongly Preferred

• Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate (DP‑600)
• Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate (PL‑300)

Nice to Have

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate (DP‑203)
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ‑305) or Azure Administrator Associate (AZ‑104)
• Power Platform Solution Architect Expert (PL‑600)
• Recognized UX credentials (e.g., NN/g UX Certification) or IAAP CPACC for accessibility awareness

Location & Flexibility

• Preferred: Twin Cities, Minnesota (St. Paul HQ) with a hybrid schedule
• Open to: Remote candidates with strong alignment to role requirements in one of Johnson Brothers established markets (AL, AZ, CO, FL, IA, IN, MS, MN, ND, NE, NC, NV, NY, RI, SD, TX, VA, WV)
   

The expected pay range for this role is $77,316 - $130,000. Actual placement within range will be contingent upon several factors, including but not limited to the candidate's qualifications, education, experience, internal equity, union status (where applicable) and alignment with market data. Johnson Brothers offers eligible team members and their dependents comprehensive health benefits and programs, which include medical, dental, vision, life insurance, health savings and flexible spending accounts. Other benefits for eligible team members include 401(k) with an employer match, short term disability coverage, company-paid long term disability insurance, generous paid time off (PTO) plans and paid parental leave.

Johnson Brothers is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fair treatment and hiring based on qualifications. We prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status, or any other protected status under applicable laws.

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