Director, Data Platform

Jewelers Mutual • Raleigh, NC

21h

About The Position

We are seeking a forward-thinking and highly curious data and analytics professional to spearhead the development of an end-to-end enterprise data platform by leading the design, development, and implementation of information, data, and analytics architectures, roadmaps, and practices that produce real-time business outcomes such as personalization, data-driven decisions at the point of customer interaction and improve business effectiveness. The ideal candidate is a passionate leader who will gain a deep understanding of our business operations and strategy. The leader will proactively implement new data products and services driving both growth and operational effectiveness. You will design and create a data platform leveraging modern technologies such as Databricks and leading AI solutions. This role demands a deep engineering background with hands-on experience in building and scaling production-level systems. The ideal candidate will excel in leading teams to deliver high-quality data products and will provide mentorship, guidance, and leadership to ensure seamless integration into ongoing projects. The ideal candidate will be equally adept at influencing the management team and working side-by-side with engineering, digital product squads, data scientists, business functions, and operations leaders to both design and leverage the new Data Platform. Your ability to quickly adapt to new products and environments, motivate your team, and deliver exceptional outcomes will be pivotal. You will play a critical role in shaping our data strategy, driving innovation, and ensuring the platform's integrity, scalability, and performance. Additionally, you will maintain strong relationships with stakeholders, ensuring that our platform aligns with business objectives and delivers value effectively.

Requirements

• Expert understanding of data platform technologies, AI, and modern engineering practices.
• Has successfully designed and implemented a data platform.
• Partner with external vendors to address performance issues, system deficiencies, technical challenges, and new feature development.
• Ability to understand emerging technologies to drive software evaluations, PoCs and pilots.
• Ability to surface, prioritize and balance multiple priorities.
• Relationship building and collaboration skills across diverse stakeholders and customers.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, including experience interpreting data, sometimes with limited context and direction.
• Expertise in strategic thinking, with strong business acumen.
• Bachelor’s degree, master’s degree preferred.
• At least 10 years of leadership experience designing, implementing, and modernizing data platforms (Lakehouse, Datawarehouse).
• Excellent communication skills, interpersonal and collaborative skills, and the ability tocommunicate information security and risk-related concepts to technical and nontechnicalaudiences in a customer centric approach.
• Up-to-date knowledge of modern data and data engineering practices.
• Poise and ability to act calmly and competently in high-pressure, high-stress situations.
• Excellent business acumen, ability to translate strategy to plans to action, problem solving, negotiating skills and analytical thinking.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership and Business Enablement Enable personalization at the point of customer interaction leveraging real-time data.
• Designs and creates a data platform that software engineers, data science, AI engineers and the enterprise want to use and leverage – data is available, accurate, connected, and easy to leveragewith proper security and privacy controls.
• Overall ownership and set strategy of comprehensive data platform (Databricks).
• Owns the why and vision of the data platform.
• Ensure accessibility, reliability, scalability, quality, security, and privacy.
• Links the platforms capabilities to business objectives (personalized customer experiences).
• Stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends in data engineering and data science to ensure the platform remains cutting-edge.
• Owns master data for the enterprise (master data management) – jewelers, consumers, agents, and other key data elements are consistent, reliable, secured, and accurate for both daily operations and decision making.
• Architecture of data (creating and implementing data structures/ models) – this design will then be used to create data products or to be leveraged by data scientists and AI teams.
• Roadmap to consolidate to single data platform on AWS Databricks.
• Engineering processes and practices to convert data from source systems into data platforms.
• Build and maintain a self-service / data mining reporting and data analysis capability.
• Build strong relationships with internal customers, partners, and stakeholders.
• Tight collaboration with Chief Data Officer, data scientists, Master Data Management, software engineering and AI teams.
• Influence cross-functional initiatives related to data tools, governance, and cross-domain data sharing.
• Culture & Talent Leadership Partner with business units and understand business objectives and guide your teams in defining the product roadmap, designing optimal data platforms, and building product solutions.
• Influence and define the long-term vision, mission, and data strategies.
• Ensure technical designs are thoroughly evaluated and aligned with business objectives.
• Encourages and supports business units to own and experiment with analytic and AI applications.
• Develop workforce strategy to meet the organization’s current and future needs through developing, mentoring, hiring, and/or sourcing talent.
• Build and inspire a high-performing, diverse security and controls team with a focus on learning, transparency, and inclusiveness.
• Partner with Human Resources to create learning, development and progression opportunities aligned to the organization’s skill and capability needs, and to provide rewarding career paths for teams.
• Lead and influences cross-functionally in a collaborative way.
• Executive Communication Educate executives on Data Platform design and value.
• Translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences.
• Metrics, KPIs, and Continuous Improvement Define and own Data Platform and metrics which highlight performance, quality, reliability, and usage (business value).
• Key metric will be platform adoption / usage.
• Deliver clear, compelling data insights to executives and business stakeholders.
• Support Personalization, Behavioral Analytics, AI and making Data-Driven Decisions at the point of customer interaction.

Benefits

• Benefit from 50% charitable gift matching and paid volunteer time to support nonprofit causes
• Join a team recognized for an environment of innovation and growth.
• Work alongside talented, passionate peers who value ownership and continuous learning.
• Includes performance bonuses, generous paid time off, and a top-tier retirement program with 401(k) matching and additional company contributions.

What This Job Offers

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