Director of Data Engineering

Vertex Education • Chandler, AZ

5d

About The Position

Be the one who makes a difference! At Vertex Education we are a team of high achievers, courageous leaders, and passionate believers in changing lives through education. As a purpose-led education services provider, our mission is destined to benefit many and yet it starts with just one person inspired to work together with us to make a memorable and meaningful difference for our clients, schools, students, and communities. Be the one who makes a difference—with us. At Vertex Education, we believe that data is a powerful driver of change in K–12 education. As the Director of Data Engineering, you will lead the development of scalable data platforms and innovative products that empower educators, school leaders, and internal teams to make informed decisions. By architecting modern infrastructure and mentoring a high-performing team, you will help transform complex information into actionable insights. Your leadership will directly support our mission of changing lives through education—ensuring that every data point moves us closer to better outcomes for students and schools.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• Proven experience leading, mentoring, and hiring a data engineering team in a player-coach capacity.
• Hands-on expertise with modern data stacks, including Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, and Azure Data Factory.
• Demonstrated success in building data models and platforms that enable self-service analytics.
• Experience managing competing priorities and maintaining a data roadmap across cross-functional stakeholders.
• Strong background in data governance, metric standardization, and data quality frameworks.
• Proficiency managing the full software development lifecycle (SDLC) within an agile environment.
• Experience managing operational budgets for cloud infrastructure and vendor tools.
• Knowledge of and experience with data privacy regulations, such as FERPA, in an educational data context.

Nice To Haves

• Experience developing and launching data products or services for external clients.
• Familiarity with integrating legacy systems and disparate data sources into unified pipelines.
• Proficiency with Tableau and other business intelligence/visualization tools.
• Ability to communicate complex technical strategies clearly to non-technical executives.
• Experience working within or providing services to the education sector.
• Hands-on experience with vector databases and embedding pipelines for AI/ML workloads.
• Knowledge of semantic layers and knowledge graphs to support machine-readable business logic.

Responsibilities

• Self-Service Platform Development & Enablement: Design and maintain intuitive, reliable data models using dbt to support self-service analytics.
• Build and operate data ingestion pipelines using Fivetran and Azure Data Factory for internal and external sources.
• Administer and optimize the Snowflake data warehouse and Tableau platform for performance, availability, and cost-efficiency.
• Create training materials, host office hours, and promote data literacy to increase analytics adoption across the organization.
• Commercial Data Product Development: Partner with business development and service leaders to scope and design revenue-generating data products for external clients.
• Lead end-to-end product development, from prototype to production deployment and ongoing support.
• Build data integration solutions that unify legacy student information systems while ensuring interoperability and scalability.
• Translate data capabilities into clear value propositions and documentation for sales and client teams.
• Team Leadership & Engineering Excellence: Provide direct technical coaching and mentorship to data engineers, accelerating skill development and impact.
• Establish foundational engineering practices including version control, code reviews, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Lead backlog grooming and sprint planning to prioritize and deliver high-impact work quickly and consistently.
• Define team roles, manage hiring processes, and onboard new team members to strengthen engineering capacity.
• Strategic Execution & Data Governance Collaborate with executive stakeholders to maintain a prioritized, cross-divisional data roadmap.
• Lead the Data Governance Council to standardize metrics, improve data quality, and manage access policies.
• Ensure compliance with data privacy laws (e.g., FERPA) through strong encryption, access controls, and audits.
• Manage the data platform budget, including cloud infrastructure and vendor contracts, to control cost of ownership.

Benefits

• Enjoy industry-leading pay, rewards, referral bonuses, with unlimited flexible paid time-off for performance.
• Be able to care for your health and your family with comprehensive medical, dental and vision benefits and invest in your future with 401(k) plans with a 6% employer match on your contributions.
• Enhance your growth and development with mentoring and money to take training classes.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 51-100 employees