{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/database-architects/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Database Architects",
    "soc_code": "15-1243",
    "category": "Tech",
    "us_employment": 67140,
    "median_annual_wage": 139500
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 38,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 9,
    "embodiment": 2,
    "liability_shield": 4,
    "trust_premium": 8,
    "judgment_accountability": 15
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Normalization to 3NF, index selection, writing DDL and stored procedures, dimensional modeling for a warehouse, and drafting data dictionaries are all pattern work a model reproduces from a requirements paragraph — what sits above 6 is the un-writable part: reverse-engineering an undocumented legacy schema where column names lie, negotiating with three application teams over who owns the customer record, and sequencing a zero-downtime migration against a live OLTP system.",
    "embodiment": "The 2 is for the rare rack-and-console day — standing up a cluster in a colo, sizing physical storage, or being in the datacenter during a cutover window — because everything else is DBeaver, dbt, Terraform and a Zoom call.",
    "liability_shield": "No state licenses database architects and no statute requires a named human to sign off a schema change; the 4 reflects only the practical gatekeeping of vendor certifications (Oracle OCP, AWS/Azure data credentials) and SOX/HIPAA change-control records that put your name on the approval ticket without putting you personally on the hook.",
    "trust_premium": "Business stakeholders rarely know who designed the schema they query, but the 8 comes from the internal standing you accumulate — being the person the application leads call before they add a table, and whose word on a retention or PII decision the compliance team accepts without re-litigating it.",
    "judgment_accountability": "A 15 is warranted because the calls you own are irreversible at business scale: choosing a sharding key or surrogate-key strategy that application code will assume for a decade, deciding whether a migration cutover proceeds or rolls back at 3am with the record of truth in flight, and setting encryption, masking and retention posture for regulated data where the wrong choice becomes a breach report rather than a bug ticket."
  },
  "rationale": "Most of the day is schema design, SQL/DDL authoring, query tuning, ETL mapping and documentation — all things LLMs already produce at usable quality for standard patterns, which compresses the routine tier of this job hard. What persists is ownership of consequential, ambiguous calls: data model tradeoffs that lock in a decade of application behavior, partitioning and capacity strategy under real load, migration cutovers where a mistake corrupts the business record of truth, and compliance posture for regulated data. There is no license and no signature requirement, so the moat is accountability and organizational trust rather than regulation.",
  "outlook": "Headcount likely flattens or shrinks as AI absorbs schema and query production, while the remaining roles consolidate into fewer, more senior architects accountable for production data risk.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift is genuine here: if LLM-generated DDL and query tuning absorb the routine tier, the residual role concentrates in migration cutover planning, capacity/partitioning strategy under real load, and reconciling conflicting data models across acquired systems — work that requires knowing undocumented production behavior no model has access to. Watch for job postings retitled toward 'data platform owner' / 'migration lead' with schema authoring dropped from the requirements.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Regulated-data attestation regimes are the only realistic route: e.g. if bank regulators' data lineage expectations (BCBS 239, already enforced through Fed/OCC MRAs) or an SEC cyber-disclosure follow-on start requiring a named individual to attest that a production data model and its lineage documentation are accurate, that signature typically lands on the data architect. Similarly, HIPAA de-identification determinations under the expert-determination method already require a named qualified person; extending that to a named architect for each de-identified data mart would create a real sign-off.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Already near ceiling. It rises further only if organizations formalize schema/migration approval as a gated change-authority role — e.g. an internal data governance board where a named architect must approve irreversible migrations, mirroring how change advisory boards work in SOX-scoped environments. Auditable named approval, not just informal ownership.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "There is no plausible route to a higher trust premium: buyers of database work purchase working systems, not human authorship, and no client segment pays extra for hand-written DDL. Embodiment cannot move. Even with the liability lever, this occupation's realistic ceiling is roughly the high 40s — the licensure and signature infrastructure that protects engineers and accountants does not exist for data architecture and no professional body (there is no equivalent of a state PE board here) is building it."
  },
  "adjudication": {
    "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict",
    "outcome": "corroborated",
    "run_totals": [
      38,
      38
    ],
    "run_verdicts": [
      "EXPOSED",
      "EXPOSED"
    ]
  },
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 50440,
        "wage": 123430
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 62470,
        "wage": 134870
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 59920,
        "wage": 134700
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 64770,
        "wage": 135980
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 67140,
        "wage": 139500
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 33.1,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}