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Director, Data Engineering

Remote

Velir is an established mid-sized agency with a top-tier portfolio of clients, ranging from the world’s largest non-profits to Fortune 500 brands. As of 2023, Velir acquired Brooklyn Data Company, a premier data and analytics consultancy focused on leadership, process improvement, implementation, and advanced analytics.

At Velir, we believe people are our greatest asset. Our culture is built on a foundation of trust, collaboration, and continued improvement. We strive for excellence in everything we do, embracing challenges as opportunities for growth. Our success is driven by a shared passion for making a positive impact on our customers, our communities and each other. We are a remote first company that offers competitive pay and excellent benefits.

Overview

The Director of Data Engineering is responsible for leading our analytics function and helping the company deliver excellence across our capabilities with the collection, storage, and processing of data. This role runs all of the data engineering activities and projects for the Data Team, ensuring they are aligned with the established internal policies, global best practices, and client objectives, in a way that maximizes our resources, productivity, and drives successful outcomes for our clients.  

The Director of Data Engineering is also technically credible as a subject matter expert (SME) within their function. As such, this role is responsible for defending team and company productivity, ensuring that other internal functions and key stakeholders understand the rationale and capacity for their function’s skills, knowledge, and abilities. Finally, the Director will proactively identify cross-organization dependencies and work with individual teams to align project priorities with business strategy. 

 

Responsibilities

Functional Leadership: You are responsible for technical expertise as a functional director, which involves having a deep understanding of data engineering. You leverage this expertise to inform engagement and staffing decisions, provide guidance to your direct and indirect reports, and ensure that the data engineering department operates efficiently and effectively. This also means identifying emerging trends, addressing complex challenges, and staying current with industry best practices to drive innovation and help Velir maintain a competitive advantage in the solutions we provide.  

  • Exceptional understanding of and a key contributor to the engineering organization as well as company-level strategy.  
  • Work closely with managers and their teams to understand current project challenges and guide them in problem-solving effectively and efficiently.  
  • Guides engineering plans and works with their teams to make sure teams are prioritizing a good balance between tech and product investment.  
  • Leads by example by contributing to the tech community via public speaking, writing blogs and other engagements helping attract engineering talent and enhancing our profile as an employer. 
  • Helps team see when they’re not having impact and refocusing (if/when needed)  
  • Routinely improves company strategy in large and small ways. Helps to build and define what it means to work at our company and to maintain culture. Brings people together to solve problems.  

  

Cross-Team Collaboration: You are responsible for optimizing productivity and client satisfaction across our projects where data engineering is engaged. You work alongside your managers and other functional directors to collectively assess potential challenges and develop strategies to address them.   

  • Helps set the vision of the department and drives larger cross-functional technical projects which need expertise of multiple people across functions.  
  • Encourages and inspires their teams and managers to set an example of culture and performance for the rest of the company.  
  • Recognized as an exceptional and respected lead across the engineering organization.  
  • Ensures that their teams are aligned, properly staffed, have access to the resources and tools needed to do their jobs effectively, and that projects are moving along on schedule.  
  • Work closely with data solutions managers to ensure adequate and sustainable analytics engineering coverage across client engagements.   
  • Share knowledge and resources between teams to ensure that the right people with the right skills are assigned to projects.  

  

Team Leadership: You are responsible for assembling, developing, and managing the data engineering department, including recruiting, and retaining team members, defining roles and responsibilities, fostering a collaborative and productive work environment, and providing coaching and feedback to empower and share accountability with your direct and indirect reports.  

  • Efficient conductor of different teams, engineering managers and high-level individual contributors to impact department and organizational level goals.  
  • Coaches and mentors others Engineering Managers and Senior Engineering Managers helping them build and grow their teams.   
  • Guides feedback conversations on how team members are doing, helping have tough conversations with team members and help with team structure set-up (e.g. team splits and merges)  
  • Builds a culture around sharing knowledge and documenting technical decisions and designs; actively shapes and evolves culture in the department / company through setting an example.  
  • Influences department design to minimize friction and maximize productivity, identifying early when new teams are needed and initiates building them.  
  • Helps Engineering Managers and Senior Engineering Managers deal with ambiguity around people issues as well as architectural vision for client projects.  
  • Collaborate with People Operations and Engineering leadership to strengthen and develop key skills, competencies, and expertise areas for your functional area, including planning recurring training and onboarding programs.  

  

Skills & Qualifications

  • Proven experience as a data engineer and manager, preferably already in a Senior Manager or Director capacity.  
  • Strong knowledge of data engineering concepts, ETL processes, data warehousing, and database technologies.  
  • Hands-on experience with big data platforms, cloud-based data infrastructure (such as AWS or GCP), and data pipelines.  
  • Proficiency in programming languages (Python, SQL, etc.) and familiarity with data manipulation frameworks (e.g., Spark, Hadoop).  
  • Solid understanding of data modeling, data governance, and data security principles.  
  • Excellent leadership skills and the ability to inspire and motivate a team to achieve defined goals.  
  • Strong project management and organizational skills, with a track record of successfully delivering complex data engineering projects on time and within budget.  

 

Physical Requirements

  • Frequent sitting at a desk performing work on a computer
  • Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

 

Compensation Range: $185,000 - $205,000 annually

Please note that compensation packages are finalized after the interview process is concluded. We use a competency-based approach to base pay, which means it is based on the competencies and skills demonstrated for this role.

 

Core Company Values

  • Take the Long View - Ensure the company is built to last
  • Be Courageous - Make the right decisions even when they aren't the easiest decisions
  • Be Genuine - Bring honesty and authenticity to all that you do
  • Work with Focus + Passion - Display purpose and pride in your work and never stop learning

As an equal opportunity employer, we are firmly committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our hiring efforts. We recognize that we need team members from all backgrounds and experiences to successfully shape a positive employee experience as well as deliver our product and service solutions. To that end, we actively seek candidates who can bring diverse experiences and backgrounds to our team. We know that complex factors and systemic bias can get in the way of us meeting strong candidates, so please don't hesitate to apply even if you're not 100% sure.

At this time, Velir does not sponsor candidates and unfortunately cannot accept those on OPT or CPT.

 

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