Senior Director, Data Engineering (AWS)

Senior Director, Data Engineering - Lead AWS Solutions Architect 

The Senior Director, Data Engineering is one of the most strategic, high-pressure, and mission-critical roles at phData. If you're seeking a position that challenges your technical expertise, business acumen, and leadership abilities daily—this is it.

In this role, you will function as a CTO-like advisor for phData’s most strategic customers. You will lead customer success, direct technical strategy, drive delivery excellence, and serve as a key stakeholder in growing long-term partnerships and revenue. This position requires a unique blend of hands-on architecture skills, executive presence, client empathy, and entrepreneurial drive.

If you thrive in highly visible, fast-paced roles where the expectations are high and the impact is massive, this is the career-defining opportunity you’ve been looking for.

Why This Role Matters

This role is one of the most challenging and high-impact positions at phData. As the Sr. Director, Data Engineering, you will not only be a technical leader but also a business driver, team coach, and trusted partner. You will lead from the front—turning customer ambiguity into clarity, complexity into strategy, and roadblocks into revenue.

If you are energized by solving hard problems, earning trust, and scaling impact in fast-paced environments, we want you on our team.

Play a significant role in AWS Platform Architecture -  REQUIRES successful experience in Technical Account Leadership expanding services and driving account growth for external customers

Key Responsibilities

• Cloud Infrastructure & Security: Design and deploy scalable SageMaker domains to enable secure data sharing across teams and domains. Implement best practices for VPC, IAM, encryption, and compliance (SOC2, HIPAA, etc.).
• Authentication & Authorization: Integrate SSO and AWS Identity Center, manage RBAC, multi-account permissions, and access policies for SageMaker and DataZone.
• Monitoring & Automation: Enable CloudWatch logging, compliance monitoring, audit trails, and automate multi-domain SageMaker deployments using Terraform or alternative solutions.
• Migration & Governance: Lead data migration from Lake Formation to DataZone, align architecture to a federated data mesh, and enforce governance workflows for cross-domain sharing.
• Performance & Cost Optimization: Conduct load testing, define service limits, and implement cost optimization strategies with SageMaker Unified and DataZone.

Your Impact 

Client Strategy & Technical Leadership

• Serve as the executive-level technical leader and primary advisor for strategic customer accounts
• Act as a CTO for your accounts, guiding technology decisions, roadmaps, architecture, and platform maturity
• Build deep relationships with technical and business stakeholders, driving consensus on solutions
• Lead Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), Innovation Days, roadmap presentations, and architectural vision sessions
• Deliver clear recommendations, success criteria, and measurement frameworks for each engagement
• Step into complex or ambiguous problem spaces and provide clarity, direction, and momentum

Account Expansion & Sales Partnership

• Collaborate closely with Account Executives to create and execute growth strategies
• Identify new opportunities for phData services and lead scoping, pricing, and proposal development
• Influence buying centers, build executive relationships, and create value-based narratives for expansion
• Deeply understand customer needs and industry trends, positioning phData offerings accordingly
• Drive strategic alignment between the customer, partners (e.g., Snowflake), and internal teams
• Develop and execute multi-year technology roadmaps aligned to client business outcomes

Delivery Oversight & Quality Assurance

• Own delivery success and overall satisfaction across all projects within assigned accounts
• Ensure delivery quality through mentorship, leadership, and hands-on involvement as needed
• Provide architectural oversight, escalation management, and alignment across teams
• Build technical documentation, vision statements, solution architectures, and proofs of concept
• Drive accountability across internal and client teams through strategic, candid communication
• Lead enablement and education of delivery teams through documentation, onboarding support, and cross-training sessions

People Development & Thought Leadership

• Mentor technical consultants and engineers across the delivery organization
• Build and grow technical and communication skills across teams to elevate delivery maturity
• Identify and share delivery patterns that drive scalable, repeatable customer success
• Actively contribute to phData internal initiatives and communities of practice
• Internal Leadership & Collaboration
• Lead client resource planning, forecasting, and skills alignment in partnership with Recruiting and Resourcing
• Track KPIs and metrics across engagements to measure and communicate business outcomes
• Contribute to internal knowledge sharing and play a key role in Practice Lead strategy discussions
• Collaborate with partner technology teams and keep the broader account team aligned and informed
• Participate in key leadership, sales, and delivery syncs to ensure alignment across functions

What We’re Looking For

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on experience delivering complex data or AI/ML platforms in production environments
• 3+ years in a consulting leadership role with direct client ownership and revenue accountability
• Deep technical expertise in cloud platforms (Snowflake, AWS, Azure, GCP), modern data stacks, and MLOps tools
• Proven success growing enterprise accounts and building executive-level relationships
• Strong architectural and implementation skills in Python, SQL, dbt, and modern infrastructure tooling
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills with a strong sense of presence and clarity under pressure
• Willingness to travel for customer meetings, QBRs, and key events when necessary

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in a technical, data, or business-related discipline
• Experience leading delivery within a scaled services or consulting firm
• Proficiency in partner ecosystem collaboration (especially Snowflake, AWS, dbt)
• Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud-native AI/ML tools
• Demonstrated thought leadership (e.g., blogs, speaking, open source) is a plus

Why phData? We offer:

• Remote-First Work Environment
• Casual, award-winning small-business work environment
• Collaborative culture that prizes autonomy, creativity, and transparency
• Competitive comp, excellent benefits, 4 weeks PTO plan plus 10 Holidays (and other cool perks)
• Accelerated learning and professional development through advanced training and certifications

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