Director of Data Collective

Join Sovrn as the Director of Data Collective, where you'll lead the team responsible for our data platform, including pipelines, lakehouse, data services, and cloud infrastructure. This hands-on engineering leadership role requires strong technical proficiency, experience in data engineering, and the ability to drive technical and organizational decisions in a fast-moving environment. You'll work with a modern stack and a strong senior team, and have the opportunity to make a significant impact on the organization.

• Lead the team responsible for Sovrn's data platform, including pipelines, lakehouse, data services, and cloud infrastructure.
• Drive architectural decisions across pipeline design, data modeling, lakehouse architecture, and data services layers.
• Mentor and grow engineers across levels through hands-on design collaboration, technical coaching, and clear career frameworks.
• 10+ years of software / data engineering experience, with a strong hands-on track record in data platforms, distributed systems, or backend infrastructure
• Deep, current technical proficiency. You still read code, write design docs, and lead architecture, not just review work
• Familiarity with adtech data infrastructure (SSP, DSP, exchange, or ad server environments) and the programmatic ecosystem (OpenRTB, bid request/response flows, auction mechanics, supply path optimization) is a strong plus
• Experience with data security and compliance (PII, CCPA, GDPR)
• Working knowledge of cloud platform engineering practices: IaC (Terraform), CI/CD, observability, IAM, and cost management
• Ability to clearly communicate architectural concepts and team strategy at multiple levels, from engineers to executives to the board
• Comfort driving technical and organizational decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
• Hands-on experience in big data and distributed data processing in the AWS ecosystem (Python, Spark, Kafka/Redpanda, Databricks or similar lakehouse platforms)
• Hands-on experience operating production vector databases at scale, including the pipelines and infrastructure to refresh hundreds of millions of vectors on a daily cadence
• 4+ years leading and growing engineering teams, including hiring, leveling, and performance management of senior and principal-level engineers
• Track record of leading or substantially contributing to AI / agentic engineering efforts in production, not just experimentation, but shipped, operated, and iterated on
• Experience operating data systems at scale: real-time streaming, batch pipelines, data lakes, metadata management, lineage, and governance
• We understand that no candidate is perfectly qualified for any job. Experience comes in different forms, many skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way. Even more important than your resume is a clear demonstration of accountability and the ability to thrive in a fluid and collaborative environment
• We expect you to learn new things in this role and encourage you to apply if your experience is close to what we're looking for