Job Description

About the Role 

We are looking for a Senior Director, Data Engineering to lead our Data Engineering function within the Product and Technology organization. You will build and lead a team of engineering managers and senior engineers responsible for the data pipelines, platforms, and models that power Zafin's core banking and analytics products, partnering closely with Product, Analytics, and senior leadership to translate business strategy into a scalable, high-performing data engineering organization. 

What You Will Do 

• Lead the evolution of Zafin Data Fabric into a documented, reusable platform.  
• Set architectural and engineering standards across ingestion, transformation, modeling, reliability, and customer deployments; establish clear ownership, practical documentation, and a team culture that solves problems across boundaries. 
• Develop engineering managers and senior engineers by establishing clear ownership, practical documentation, and a team culture that solves problems across boundaries rather than waiting for a sprint assignment. 
• Lead and mentor engineering managers and senior/lead data engineers, building a high-performing, scalable team. 
• Own the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for data engineering across core product lines. 
• Partner with Product Management, Analytics, and senior leadership to translate business and product strategy into data engineering execution plans. 
• Drive delivery predictability for data pipelines, platforms, and models, ensuring high quality and production reliability. 
• Establish and scale data engineering practices — data quality, pipeline testing, CI/CD, and architectural standards — across the team. 
• Own budget, resourcing, and workforce planning for the data engineering function, including hiring, retention, and performance management. 
• Champion adoption of AI-assisted engineering and modern data platform practices across the team. 
• Manage technical risk and represent the data engineering function in cross-functional and leadership discussions. 
• Partner with Architecture, Security, and Platform teams to ensure data systems are secure, reliable, and scalable. 
• Report on data engineering performance, delivery metrics, and team health to senior leadership. 

What You Need to Succeed 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; Master's degree an asset. 
• 12–15 years of progressive data engineering experience, including significant experience leading and scaling data engineering teams and managers, preferably in banking, fintech, or enterprise SaaS. 
• Proven track record owning data architecture and technical strategy for a complex, enterprise-grade product. 
• Strong leadership skills, with experience building, mentoring, and retaining engineering managers and senior technical talent. 
• Deep technical expertise in data pipeline design, large-scale database systems, cloud data platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), and modern data engineering tooling (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Airflow). 
• Experience operating with autonomy, managing budgets, resourcing, and workforce planning for a data engineering organization. 
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate clearly and confidently in English, in writing and conversation, including with senior leadership. 
• Demonstrated experience driving delivery predictability and production reliability for data systems at scale. 
• Commitment to staying current with changes in data technology and engineering practices, with comfort learning unfamiliar tools and business concepts. 
• Ownership beyond assigned priorities, including investigating problems, seeking out the people and context needed, making progress independently where possible, and raising blockers early with a clear account of what has been tried. 
• Ability to work effectively across Product, Engineering, and customer-facing teams and understand the banking problem behind each technical requirement. 

Nice to Have 

• Experience in core banking, corporate/commercial banking, or enterprise deal management, billing, or pricing domains. 
• Experience building or scaling AI-enabled data engineering capabilities. 
• Familiarity with financial services security and compliance frameworks. 
• Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer or AWS Certified Solutions Architect certification. 

Success in This Role Looks Like 

• Data engineering consistently delivers a scalable, reliable roadmap on time and at a high quality standard. 
• Engineering managers and senior technical talent are supported, growing, and delivering consistently. 
• Architecture decisions position data products for long-term scale and reliability. 
• Senior leadership sees this role as the trusted owner of the data engineering function's direction and performance.

Required Skills

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