Engineering Manager - Data Platform

Two Circles•Vancouver, BC

About The Position

We are Two Circles, a Sports & Entertainment Marketing business focused on growing audiences and revenues by understanding fans. We work with clients to help them understand and influence fan behavior across various aspects like spending, attendance, channel response, and content consumption. Our platforms and services are trusted by over 900 clients globally, including major organizations like the English Premier League, Red Bull, UEFA, VISA, the NFL, Nike, and Amazon. We are a global company with nearly 1,000 employees across 14 offices. We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team within our Data Platform organization, which consists of over 100 Data & BI Engineers. This role is responsible for building and operating data products, pipelines, and platform capabilities that support data-driven decision-making in the sports industry. The Engineering Manager will collaborate closely with Product Managers, Delivery Managers, Lead Engineers, and Engineering Leadership to ensure the delivery of high-quality solutions, while also focusing on improving engineering practices, developer experience, and team effectiveness. This is a technical player-coach role, with approximately 60% of the time dedicated to people leadership, delivery, stakeholder management, and team development, and 40% focused on technical initiatives, architecture, engineering standards, AI adoption, and developer productivity. The ideal candidate has a strong background as an individual contributor and a passion for technology, comfortable with hands-on contributions, leading technical discussions, and shaping the future of the data platform. Success will be measured by team growth and performance, delivery quality and predictability, and the ability to enhance engineering capability, developer experience, and technical innovation.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in data engineering
3+ years of experience leading, managing, or mentoring engineers in a product-focused environment.
Strong track record as a hands-on data engineer before moving into leadership.
Experience designing, building, and operating modern cloud-native data platforms, preferably in Azure.
Strong understanding of modern software development practices, SDLC processes, and scalable platform architecture.
Strong understanding of data engineering concepts, including data pipelines, orchestration, data quality, analytics platforms, and operational support.
Experience with technologies such as Python, Databricks, Spark, Azure Data Factory, SQL, and CI/CD tooling.
Ability to contribute technically through architecture reviews, technical design, code reviews, and hands-on development.
Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to bridge technical and non-technical conversations.
Passion for fostering innovation, improving developer experience, and enabling teams to deliver effectively at scale.
Experience with DevOps practices, Infrastructure-as-Code, automated testing, and platform engineering concepts.
Experience driving engineering productivity, developer experience, or platform modernization initiatives.
Experience working in a fast-paced product or SaaS environment.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop Data Engineers through regular feedback, mentoring, and career development planning.
Build a high-performing engineering culture focused on accountability, collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Create clarity around expectations, goals, and team priorities.
Support hiring, onboarding, and development of engineering talent across regions.
Champion developer experience by improving tooling, workflows, documentation, and engineering productivity.
Partner with Product Managers, Delivery Managers, QA, and Engineering Leadership to align priorities and ensure predictable delivery.
Work closely with Lead Engineers to define technical scope, manage risks, remove blockers, and balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health.
Ensure consistent adoption of SDLC practices, including code reviews, testing, CI/CD, release management, monitoring, and operational ownership.
Advocate engineering best practices across architecture, quality, security, automation, observability, and reliability.
Support engineers in making sound technical decisions and navigating trade-offs.
Ensure stakeholders have clear visibility into progress, risks, and delivery outcomes.
Partner with Lead Engineers to shape technical direction, architecture decisions, and engineering standards across the platform.
Lead initiatives that improve developer experience, engineering productivity, platform reliability, and operational efficiency.
Identify opportunities to leverage AI and emerging technologies to improve engineering workflows, platform capabilities, and business outcomes.
Contribute hands-on to technical initiatives, proofs of concept, architecture spikes, and strategic engineering projects where appropriate.
Foster a culture of technical curiosity, experimentation, and continuous learning.
Support the evolution of the Data Platform through modern engineering practices, cloud-native technologies, and scalable architecture patterns.
Champion experimentation and learning around emerging technologies as we aim towards becoming an AI-native organization.
Drive improvements in onboarding, operational excellence, engineering consistency, and developer productivity across global teams.
Partner with Support and Client Enablement teams to improve operational responsiveness and customer outcomes.
Promote knowledge sharing and collaboration across teams, disciplines, and regions.