Manager, Data Engineering and AI-Ready Data Enablement

American Century Investments • Kansas City, MO

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

American Century Investments is hiring a Manager, Data Engineering and AI-Ready Data Enablement to lead development and operations for an Enterprise Data Technology team. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: the manager provides engineering guidance, contributes to technical design and architecture decisions, reviews engineering approaches, helps solve complex data challenges, and leads and develops the team. The role focuses on data engineering and data enablement rather than machine-learning model development or ML engineering. It reports to the Director - Data Technologies and works closely with IT and business data teams to support self-service development and consumption of trusted, AI-ready data products.

The manager builds and maintains an enterprise data ecosystem covering ingestion, storage, organization, and interfaces, including scalable data engineering pipelines and platforms. The role leads AI-ready data products enriched with metadata, business definitions, relationships, and context; develops reusable semantic models; and contributes to an enterprise semantic layer that supports consistent interpretation across analytics and AI use cases. It also supports self-service through reusable engineering patterns, semantic modeling guidance, tooling, and hands-on assistance while maintaining data quality, governance, and secure access.

The position may be based in the Kansas City, Missouri, or Southlake (DFW), Texas office. It is hybrid, with employees required to attend the office at a scheduled frequency. The position is not eligible for visa sponsorship; applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent relevant work experience.
• 7+ years of progressive hands-on engineering experience implementing data engineering solutions and data platforms, such as ETL, ELT, data lakes, and cloud data warehouses.
• 2+ years of experience leading engineers through people management, technical leadership, or a combination of both.
• Hands-on experience building AI-ready data products by combining data engineering with semantic modeling, metadata, and business context, including developing or implementing an enterprise semantic layer.
• Experience partnering with IT and business data teams to enable self-service development of data products through reusable patterns, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing.
• 5+ years of experience using SDLC and Agile.
• 1–3 years of experience with AWS data services such as S3, Glue, Redshift, and EMR.
• 3–5 years of demonstrated experience with data movement, including EMR or Glue.
• 5+ years of validated programming experience in Python, Java, Scala, or C#.
• 1–3 years of DevOps experience with Git, build, artifact/package management, and deployment automation.
• Ability to work in a multifunctional team environment across varied business units, vendors, countries, and cultures.
• Demonstrates American Century Investments' Winning Behaviors: Client Focused, Courageous and Accountable, Collaborative, Curious and Adaptable, and Competitively Driven.
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with SQL, relational databases, and data modeling.
• AWS certification.
• Experience designing, deploying, and supporting production cloud services in the AWS ecosystem, including EC2, EMR, and Glue.
• Ability to develop business, technical, and application architecture.
• Architecture experience with event-driven design, APIs, microservices, and stateless/chaos approaches.
• Experience with financial product datasets.
• Familiarity with data discovery, analytics, and BI tools such as Tableau.

Responsibilities

• Lead development and operations for an Enterprise Data Technology team while providing hands-on technical leadership and developing team members.
• Build and maintain an enterprise data ecosystem for ingestion, storage, organization, and interfaces, including scalable data engineering pipelines and platforms.
• Analyze business and technical requirements for data systems and applications; scope, estimate, and schedule project work; and coordinate integration of IT policies, procedures, and development practices.
• Identify, design, and implement internal process improvements, including automation of manual processes, optimization of data delivery, and infrastructure redesign for scalability.
• Research emerging data engineering, data platform, and semantic technologies to improve AI-ready data product development and enablement.
• Lead development of AI-ready data products enriched with metadata, business definitions, relationships, and context.
• Build reusable semantic models and contribute to an enterprise semantic layer for consistent interpretation across analytics and AI use cases.
• Partner with IT and business data teams to enable self-service development and consumption through reusable engineering patterns, semantic modeling guidance, tooling, and hands-on support.
• Maintain data quality, governance, and secure access while enabling self-service use of data products.
• Contribute to technical design and architecture decisions, review engineering approaches, and help solve complex data challenges.
• Mentor and guide the team toward empowered delivery and professional growth.
• Contribute to the organization's evolution toward a data-driven culture.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package with bonus plan.
• Generous PTO and competitive benefits.
• 401(k) with 5% company match plus annual performance-based discretionary contribution.
• Tuition reimbursement.
• Formal mentorship program.
• Live and online learning.

What This Job Offers

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