Director, Data Engineering

LiveRamp • San Francisco, CA

2d • $200,000 - $288,000

About The Position

LiveRamp is the data collaboration platform of choice for the world’s most innovative companies. A groundbreaking leader in consumer privacy, data ethics, and foundational identity, LiveRamp is setting the new standard for building a connected customer view with unmatched clarity and context while protecting precious brand and consumer trust. LiveRamp offers complete flexibility to collaborate wherever data lives to support the widest range of data collaboration use cases—within organizations, between brands, and across its premier global network of top-quality partners. Hundreds of global innovators, from iconic consumer brands and tech giants to banks, retailers, and healthcare leaders turn to LiveRamp to build enduring brand and business value by deepening customer engagement and loyalty, activating new partnerships, and maximizing the value of their first-party data while staying on the forefront of rapidly evolving compliance and privacy requirements.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in data engineering or data architecture roles, including 5+ years leading technical teams.
• Proven experience building and scaling global data engineering teams, especially across the U.S. and India.
• A hands-on technical leader with deep experience in designing, implementing, and optimizing modern data platforms (e.g., BigQuery, Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Kafka, Spark).
• Expertise in data modeling, ELT/ETL pipelines, orchestration, and semantic layer design.
• Familiarity with multi-cloud, lakehouse, and data mesh architectures, and best practices for data observability and quality.
• Strong understanding of FinOps, cost optimization, and workload management in cloud environments.
• Experience enabling AI, ML, and analytics workloads through scalable, reliable data infrastructure.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills; able to align technical strategies with business outcomes.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field.

Nice To Haves

• Experience integrating Generative AI and LLM-based workflows into data pipelines.
• Exposure to modern data observability and governance platforms (e.g., Monte Carlo, Atlan, DataHub, Alation).
• Experience defining and executing FinOps programs or cloud cost optimization initiatives.
• Proven ability to lead and inspire high-performing, cross-regional teams in fast-paced environments.

Responsibilities

• Strategic & Technical Leadership Define and execute LiveRamp’s data engineering strategy, aligning with company objectives, product vision, and AI readiness goals.
• Architect a modern, cloud-first data platform focused on scalability, performance, and cost optimization.
• Lead the evolution of our semantic and data layers, ensuring data is discoverable, reliable, and self-serve across business functions.
• Champion data platform modernization and modern data principles (e.g., data mesh, lakehouse architectures, and composability).
• Drive automation, observability, and FinOps practices to enhance operational efficiency and reduce cloud costs.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership — participating in architectural reviews, building proofs of concept, and guiding design and implementation decisions.
• Team Leadership & Global Growth Lead, mentor, and grow a global team of data engineers, with a focus on expanding our technical excellence and capabilities in India.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning across distributed teams.
• Serve as a player-coach: both managing and contributing directly to technical solutions and platform delivery.
• Build strong partnerships with Analytics, Product, and Engineering leaders to ensure alignment between data infrastructure and analytic outcomes.
• Governance, Quality, and Compliance Implement data governance, lineage, and access control frameworks to ensure compliance, privacy, and ethical use of data.
• Advance observability and reliability practices, ensuring proactive monitoring and optimization of pipelines and workloads.
• Promote standardization, reusability, and maintainability across data products and services.
• AI & Analytics Enablement Partner with Analytics and Data Science teams to design AI- and ML-ready infrastructure, enabling feature stores, vector databases, and real-time pipelines.
• Ensure the data platform supports AI-driven decision intelligence, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and self-service analytics.
• Collaborate on the integration of Generative AI and LLM-based tools to improve accessibility and efficiency of data insights.
• Build and operate LiveRamp’s internal data platform that powers analytics, reporting, and AI initiatives across the company.

Benefits

• People: Work with talented, collaborative, and friendly people who love what they do.
• Fun: We host in-person and virtual events such as game nights, happy hours, camping trips, and sports leagues.
• Work/Life Harmony: Flexible paid time off, paid holidays, options for working from home, and paid parental leave.
• Comprehensive Benefits Package: LiveRamp offers a comprehensive benefits package designed to help you be your best self in your personal and professional lives. Our benefits package offers medical, dental, vision, life and disability, an employee assistance program, voluntary benefits as well as perks programs for your healthy lifestyle, career growth and more.
• Savings: Our 401K matching plan—1:1 match up to 6% of salary—helps you plan ahead.
• Also Employee Stock Purchase Plan - 15% discount off purchase price of LiveRamp stock (U.S. LiveRampers)
• RampRemote: A comprehensive office equipment and ergonomics program—we provide you with equipment and tools to be your most productive self, no matter where you're located

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees