Director Data Engineering

CPI Card Group • Littleton, CO

4d • Onsite

About The Position

CPI Card Group® is a payment technology company and leading provider of credit, debit and prepaid solutions delivered physically, digitally and on-demand. CPI helps our customers foster connections and build their brands through innovative and reliable solutions, including financial payment cards, personalization and fulfillment, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) instant issuance. Learn more at www.cpicardgroup.com
The Director of Data Engineering leads CPI Card Group's data engineering function and is accountable for building, operating, and scaling the company's cloud-native Databricks Lakehouse on AWS. This role owns the people, delivery, and technology of the data platform - hiring and developing the team, setting the engineering strategy and roadmap, managing the budget and vendor relationships, and ensuring the platform reliably powers analytics, reporting, and AI across the enterprise. Reporting to the SVP, Business Technology and Data, the Director is both a technical leader and a people leader, translating CPI's "Data-First" transformation strategy into an organized, high-performing team and a dependableproduction platform, while partnering with executives and functional leaders to turn data into a strategic asset.

Requirements

• Strong technical foundation in SQL, Python, PySpark, data modeling, CI/CD, and Infrastructure-as- Code, sufficient to lead architecture decisions and earn the trust of a senior engineering team.
• Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain top engineering talent and build a high performing team culture.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and influence skills, with a proven track record aligning engineers, executives, and cross-functional partners.
• Strong delivery discipline - planning, prioritization, and execution across concurrent initiatives and shifting priorities.
• Sound business judgment on budget, vendor, and build-vs-buy decisions.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related quantitative field; Master's degree preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, data platform, or data architecture roles.
• 4+ years of experience directly managing and building engineering teams, including hiring and performance management.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with Databricks (Lakehouse architecture, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog) and AWS at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrated ownership of platform delivery and operations in a regulated environment (SOX,PCI-DSS, or similar).
• Proven experience owning a budget and managing vendor/consulting partner relationships.

Nice To Haves

• Databricks and/or AWS professional-level certifications preferred.

Responsibilities

• Build, lead, and develop the data engineering team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development. Establish team structure, roles, and staffing plans (including contractor-to-FTEconversion), and cultivate a high-performing, accountable engineering culture. Set objectives, allocate work, and ensure the team consistently delivers against commitments
• Own the strategy, roadmap, and delivery of the enterprise data platform on Databricks and AWS, including the Medallion model (Landing, Bronze Raw, Silver Standardized, Gold Consumption/Aggregates/Semantic). Prioritize the portfolio of data initiatives, manage delivery timelines and dependencies, and hold the team accountable for reliable, on-time execution that anticipates future analytics, GenAI, and agentic AI workloads.
• Ensure the production data platform is reliable, secure, and cost-efficient, with clear SLAs, monitoring, and incident management. Oversee the governance model, including Unity Catalog administration, RBAC, data classification, lineage, and quality, ensuring compliance with SOX, PCI-DSS, and other regulatory obligations in partnership with the Data Governance Council and security leadership.
• Own the data engineering budget, including cloud spend, tooling, and consulting partners. Lead vendor evaluation, selection, and management, and make build-vs-buy and platform investment decisions. Partner with functional executives to align the roadmap to business priorities, and present strategy, progress, risks, and investment recommendations to senior and executive leadership.
• Set the engineering standards, reference architectures, and best practices the team follows, including Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), monorepo CI/CD (GitLab), and pipeline design patterns (PySpark, Delta). Provide senior technical direction and design review, guiding the Data Architect and engineers and serving as an escalation point for the hardest technical problems.
• Sponsor enterprise master data management (MDM), including the Unique Customer ID (UCID) program.
• Ensure the data platform and migration strategy support the future Acumatica ERP implementation.
• Champion the company's AI enablement agenda, including reusable data/AI platform capabilities and AI Office Hours.
• Contribute to workforce planning, headcount business cases, and organizational design for the broader Business Technology and Data function.

Benefits

• Competitive pay rates and an inclusive, empowering and rewarding culture.
• Solid benefits package including Medical, Dental, Vision, Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance, Accident Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, FSA, HSA, Vacation and Holiday Pay, Tuition Reimbursement and 401(k) with a competitive company match percentage.

What This Job Offers

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