Senior Director, Data Engineering

About the role

We are seeking an inspiring and transformative Senior Director, Data Engineering, with 15+ years of data engineering experience and 7+ years in management. You will lead an organization of Data Engineers and leaders, spearhead strategic planning and delivery/execution at the domain level, create and champion the data engineering vision and strategy, and be accountable for engineering excellence, driving significant advancements in data capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Provide executive leadership and strategic direction for a multi-faceted Data Engineering organization spanning multiple product lines or technological domains
• Define and champion the long-term technology vision, data analytics and AI strategy, architecture, and roadmap, ensuring it aligns with and advances the company's strategic objectives, leveraging a comprehensive understanding of data platforms
• Lead and mentor a team senior data engineering leaders, cultivating an environment of excellence, innovation in data utilization and continuous growth
• Drive the execution of strategic data engineering initiatives, ensuring the successful delivery of highly scalable, reliable, and impactful data platforms
• Collaborate with C-level executives and other senior leaders across the company to influence overall business strategy and ensure tight alignment between data engineering and other functions, demonstrating the strategic value of data
• Oversee strategic workforce planning, talent acquisition, and organizational development to build and sustain a world-class data engineering team
• Champion a culture of innovation in data processing and technical excellence in data engineering, positioning the company as a leader in its data capabilities
• Represent the company's data engineering capabilities and vision to external and internal stakeholders, including key customers, partners, and industry analysts
• Anticipate and navigate complex technological and market shifts in data management, guiding the organization through periods of change and growth in its data
• Lead modernization of the enterprise data platform on Google Cloud Platform (BigQuery) and establish a scalable, secure, AI-ready data foundation
• Implement a Medallion Data Architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) and reusable enterprise data products
• Own engineering standards for ELT/ETL, orchestration, CI/CD, DataOps, observability, testing, Infrastructure as Code, reliability, and cost optimization
• Partner with Data Governance, Enterprise Architecture and other teams to operationalize data quality, metadata, lineage, security, privacy, and master data standards
• Enable advanced analytics, machine learning, and Generative AI through trusted, governed, high-quality data assets
• Develop and mentor a world-class engineering organization while fostering accountability and technical excellence

Requirements

This position is fully remote. This role is an People Leader position. A day in the life as a Senior Director, Data Engineering...

Qualifications

• Exceptional executive leadership, strategic vision in data, and organizational development capabilities, with a proven ability to lead and inspire large, complex data engineering organizations
• Deep and broad understanding of current and emerging data processing technologies, data architectural paradigms (e.g., data mesh, data lakehouse), cloud-native data, and engineering best practices for data
• Outstanding business acumen and financial literacy, with experience managing significant budgets and linking data investments to tangible business outcomes and strategic value
• Superior communication, negotiation, and influencing skills, with the ability to build strong relationships and drive alignment at the executive level on data strategies
• Demonstrated success in building, scaling, and leading high-performing, geographically distributed data and machine learning engineering teams
• Expertise in driving large-scale data transformation initiatives and fostering a culture of innovation in data utilization, agility in delivery, and operational excellence in data systems
• Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to make critical decisions in complex and ambiguous data situations
• Prominent track record of developing and mentoring senior data engineering leaders