Director, Data Platform

The Role

We are building the foundational data layer that will underpin how a global investment firm makes decisions for years to come. This is a Director-level mandate to lead the design, development, and ongoing evolution of our Snowflake-based centralized data platform - and to do so as a genuine player-coach: hands-on in the architecture, present in the code, and accountable for developing the team around you.

This role sits directly below the C-suite with a clear line of progression. The person who succeeds here will have shaped the firm's data infrastructure, built a team, and earned the visibility that comes with it. We are looking for someone who has operated at this level in a financial services or institutional context and is ready to own something meaningful.

What You’ll Do

Platform architecture

• Own the end-to-end design of a Snowflake-based centralized data platform serving the full investment organization
• Define and enforce data modeling standards, governance frameworks, and ingestion patterns across asset classes and business functions
• Architect for scale - latency, cost, reliability, and regulatory compliance built in from day one
• Lead technical evaluation of adjacent tooling: orchestration, transformation, observability, and access layers

Development & delivery

• Remain active in the build - writing and reviewing production-quality code, not just directing from the sidelines
• Drive the development of core pipelines: market data, reference data, portfolio analytics, and risk feeds
• Establish CI/CD practices, testing standards, and deployment rigor across the data engineering function
• Partner with quant research and technology teams to ensure the platform serves complex, latency-sensitive use cases

Team leadership

• Build and mentor a team of data engineers - set the technical bar, conduct reviews, and grow the next generation of talent
• Serve as the internal authority on data platform decisions; present architecture and roadmap to senior stakeholders including C-suite
• Foster a culture of ownership, craftsmanship, and delivery in a firm where engineering is treated as a competitive advantage
• Partner with recruiting to attract exceptional engineers to a platform-defining mandate

Firm-wide impact

• Translate complex data requirements from portfolio managers, traders, and risk teams into elegant, reliable infrastructure
• Drive the firm's data strategy in partnership with the CTO and COO - this is an active seat at the leadership table
• Identify and close gaps in data quality, lineage, and accessibility that constrain investment decision-making
• Position the platform to evolve with the firm's growth - new strategies, geographies, and regulatory requirements

Core stack

• Snowflake
• dbt
• Airflow / Prefect
• Python
• SQL
• Kafka / event streaming
• Cloud (AWS / Azure)
• Git / CI-CD
• Data contracts
• Data governance

Who you are

• 8+ years of data engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a senior or lead capacity - you have built platforms, not just contributed to them
• Deep, production-grade Snowflake expertise - architecture, performance optimization, cost governance, and security; you are the person others come to with hard questions
• Background in financial services, investment banking, asset management, or institutional consulting - you understand the data domain: market data, reference data, trade lifecycle, risk, and regulatory reporting
• Demonstrated player-coach track record - you have led teams while remaining technically active; you are not looking to move entirely into management
• Proven ability to operate cross-functionally in complex organizations - you have communicated with C-suite, worked alongside quants and traders, and navigated the intersection of finance and technology
• Strong opinions, loosely held - you bring clear architectural conviction and can defend it, but you lead through influence and intellectual credibility rather than authority
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field; equivalent experience considered for candidates with exceptional platform credentials