Customer Data Management (CDM) Architect

• Role Title - Customer Data Management (CDM) Architect
• Career Level - Principal / Lead Architect
• Discipline - Master Data Management (MDM) & Enterprise Data Architecture
• Industry - Transportation, Logistics & Supply Chain
• Engagement - Managed Services + Engineering Services
• Core Platform - Oracle Fusion Customer Data Management (CDM)
• Ecosystem - CRM (Salesforce), Transportation Management Systems (TMS), Rating & Billing, Order Management, Finance / ERP
• Location - Mysore (Night Shift - US timing)

01 ABOUT the Organization

Forward Air is a leading North American logistics company that provides fast, reliable, and time-sensitive transportation services. It offers solutions such as Less-than-Truckload (LTL), Truckload, Intermodal, Drayage, Final-Mile, and Global Multimodal Logistics. With over 40 years of experience, the company serves freight forwarders, airlines, logistics providers, and shippers, helping them move goods efficiently. Accurate and well-managed customer data enables Forward Air to deliver precise pricing, billing, shipment tracking, and customer service.

02 ABOUT the Role

In a high-velocity transportation network, the customer account is the anchor for everything that follows — rating, billing, invoicing, credit, service execution, and reporting. The Customer Data Management (CDM) Architect owns the platform and the discipline that make customer data trustworthy across the enterprise. Built on Oracle Fusion Customer Data Management, CDM is the organization's single source of truth (Master Data Management) for customer accounts, hierarchies, and enrichment — the golden record that every downstream commercial and operational system depends on.

This is a senior, hands-on architecture role. You will define the target-state customer data architecture; govern how accounts are created, mastered, enriched, and published to downstream systems; and ensure the attribute-level consistency that protects billing accuracy and service reliability. You will lead across both Managed Services (production stability, incident and publish-queue resolution, reconciliation) and Engineering Services (enhancements, integrations, Fusion customization, and Oracle Groovy development), while setting standards and mentoring the teams who sustain the platform.

Why it matters: in transportation and logistics, a single incorrect customer attribute — a mismatched hierarchy, bill-to, credit term, or division — ripples downstream into misbilling, revenue leakage, and service failures. This role exists to make that impossible.

03 WHERE This Role Sits — The Data & Systems Landscape

CDM sits at the center of the enterprise customer ecosystem. As the authoritative source of the customer golden record, it publishes and synchronizes customer data to every commercial and operational system across the business:

•   Customer Master (Oracle Fusion CDM) — the system of record for customer accounts, corporate hierarchies (parent/child, bill-to and ship-to), and enrichment — extended through Fusion customizations and Oracle Groovy scripting.

•   CRM (Salesforce) — the commercial platform that consumes published accounts, hierarchies, and ownership for sales and customer service.

•   Transportation Management Systems (TMS) — operational platforms that plan, execute, and track freight and depend on reconciled, attribute-consistent customer data.

•   Rating, Billing & Invoicing — revenue systems where customer terms, hierarchy, and division directly determine accurate charges and clean invoices.

•   Order Management & Fulfillment — downstream systems that consume customer accounts to execute and settle shipments.

•   Credit, Finance & ERP — functions dependent on accurate account creation, enrichment, credit terms, and movement across divisions and lines of business.

•   Publish / Distribution Layer — the controlled mechanism whose health determines whether new and updated accounts reach downstream systems successfully.

04 KEY Responsibilities

Master Data Architecture & Strategy

•   Define and maintain the enterprise customer master data architecture, roadmap, and target-state design.

•   Establish MDM principles, customer hierarchy models, attribute ownership, and golden-record definitions.

•   Design scalable account structures that serve sales, operations, billing, credit, and finance simultaneously.

•   Set enterprise data standards — naming conventions, address standardization, validation frameworks, and survivorship rules.

•   Drive modernization of the customer data platform, its integration fabric, and Fusion customization strategy.

Solution & Integration Architecture

•   Produce architecture blueprints, integration patterns, reference architectures, and technical design documents.

•   Architect and govern the publication and synchronization of customer data to CRM, TMS, billing, and finance systems.

•   Define API standards, event/publish patterns, authentication, error handling, and retry and replay strategies.

•   Lead architecture and design-review governance; approve high-impact changes to the customer domain.

•   Translate business and line-of-business requirements into resilient, scalable solution designs.

Data Governance & Data Quality

•   Own enterprise customer data quality — completeness, accuracy, uniqueness, and timeliness.

•   Establish duplicate prevention, matching and merge logic, and preventative validation at the point of entry.

•   Lead standardization, enrichment, and cleansing programs across the customer domain.

•   Define stewardship and correction workflows for account creation, enrichment, and movement across divisions.

Production Operations & Reliability (Managed Services)

•   Set the operational support model, monitoring standards, and service-reliability targets for the CDM platform.

•   Oversee production incident management, triage, and restoration for customer data and integration failures.

•   Govern publish-queue monitoring — diagnose and resolve failed account publications to downstream systems.

•   Lead root cause analysis (RCA) and problem management to convert recurring issues into permanent fixes.

•   Drive proactive health checks, capacity awareness, and end-to-end stability across the customer data pipelines.

Engineering & Development Leadership

•   Provide technical leadership for user stories, production enhancements, and account-level improvements.

•   Guide Oracle Fusion customization, integration logic, validation rules, and Groovy-based development.

•   Review designs, code, and integration patterns; enforce engineering best practices and standards.

•   Support new integrations and evolving line-of-business processes end to end.

•   Mentor engineers and support analysts; lead knowledge sharing and technical enablement.

Reconciliation & Cross-System Consistency

•   Define the reconciliation strategy across the customer master, CRM, and downstream operational systems.

•   Establish reconciliation controls, exception handling, and reporting that protect billing and invoicing accuracy.

•   Investigate and resolve cross-system discrepancies and coordinate corrective action across enterprise teams.

Governance, Security & Compliance

•   Establish and enforce architecture standards, change governance, and operational controls.

•   Ensure compliance with security, audit, and customer-data-privacy requirements across the ecosystem.

•   Chair or contribute to architecture review boards and enterprise data-governance forums.

05 HOW Success Is Measured

Impact is measured by the trustworthiness of the customer master, the reliability of downstream synchronization, and the maturity of the architecture and governance that sustain them.

• Data Integrity - Attribute-level consistency of the customer master across CRM, TMS, and billing; fewer data defects.
• Synchronization Reliability - Publish success rate and timeliness; reduction in failed account publications to downstream systems.
• Production Stability - Incident volume, mean time to resolve, and recurrence rate for customer-data and integration issues.
• Billing Accuracy - Reduction in misbilling and revenue leakage traced to customer, hierarchy, or division errors.
• Architecture Maturity - Adoption of standards, reference patterns, and governed change across the customer domain.
• Delivery Throughput - Predictable delivery of enhancements, line-of-business features, and new integrations.

06 Required Qualifications

•   7+ years in enterprise applications, data architecture, or master data management (MDM).

•   5+ years designing customer master data solutions in large, integrated enterprise environments.

•   Deep, hands-on expertise with Oracle Fusion Customer Data Management and Fusion customizations.

•   Strong command of enterprise integration patterns, API design, and event- or publish-based synchronization.

•   Proven experience operating and stabilizing large-scale production systems and integration pipelines.

•   Demonstrated ownership of data governance, reconciliation, and data-quality frameworks.

•   Experience leading and mentoring distributed engineering and production-support teams.

07 Preferred Qualifications & Certifications

•   Oracle Fusion CDM certification(s) and/or Oracle Cloud application credentials.

•   Enterprise Architecture certification (TOGAF or equivalent).

•   Experience in transportation, logistics, supply chain, freight, or another high-volume, billing-intensive industry.

•   Working knowledge of the Salesforce ecosystem as a downstream consumer of the customer master.

•   Hands-on Oracle Groovy scripting for Fusion integration and customization logic.

•   Cloud platform experience (Microsoft Azure preferred).

08 Core Competencies

Enterprise Architecture, Master Data Management, Data Governance, Integration Architecture, Production Reliability, Reconciliation Strategy, Oracle Fusion CDM, Solution Design, Root Cause Analysis, Technical Leadership, Stakeholder Management, Platform Modernization