Director Data Engineering & Automation

Empower • Overland Park, KS

5d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Data Engineering will lead a team responsible for transforming data from disparate systems to deliver insights and analytics for business stakeholders. This role will shape data strategy, platforms, and transformation processes that support analytics, machine learning, and visualization, while creating technical roadmaps and recommending strategies for data pipelines and integration. You will work in a collaborative, cross-functional environment and communicate effectively with technical and business partners across the organization.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or equivalent.
• 7+ years of post-degree professional experience.
• 4+ years building and maintaining ETL pipelines in a data warehouse environment.
• 5+ years of Python development experience.
• Experience hiring and leading a team of 3+ data engineers, including supervision, goal-setting, and supporting professional growth.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills to initiate and drive projects.
• Experience with AWS integrations such as Kinesis, Firehose, Aurora Unload, Redshift, Spectrum, Elastic Mapreduce, SageMaker, and Lambda.
• Experience provisioning data sets for analytics tools such as Tableau, Quicksight, or similar, and knowledge of analytic tools such as R, Tableau, Plotly, and Python Pandas.
• Expert SQL skills (including performance tuning, indexes, and materialized views) and proficiency designing and executing NoSQL databases to optimize big data storage and retrieval.
• Experience with API integrations with external vendors to push/pull data between organizations, and familiarity with data orchestration pipelines using Argo or Airflow.

Nice To Haves

• Redshift experience.
• Financial services industry experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of data engineers transforming data from disparate systems to enable insights and analytics for business stakeholders.
• Create technical roadmaps and recommend strategies for data pipelines and integration.
• Leverage cloud-based infrastructure to implement scalable, resilient, and efficient data engineering solutions.
• Collaborate with data analysts, data scientists, database administrators, cross-functional teams, and business stakeholders to solve problems.
• Influence architectural decisions and design patterns across the data platform.
• Provide technical leadership across the software development lifecycle, from design to deployment, including hands-on contribution.
• Develop project plans, facilitate prioritization timelines, allocate resources, and take ownership of assigned technical projects in a fast-paced environment.
• Perform code reviews and ensure data engineers follow best-practice coding standards.
• Define and validate test cases to ensure data quality, reliability, and a high level of confidence.
• Continuously improve quality, efficiency, and scalability of data pipelines, reducing gaps and inconsistencies.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Retirement savings – 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
• Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
• Business-casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
• Generous paid time off upon hire – including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
• Paid volunteer time — 16 hours per calendar year
• Leave of absence programs – including paid parental leave, paid short- and long-term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
• Business Resource Groups (BRGs) – BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director