[Remote] Director Data Engineering

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. CPI Card Group is a payment technology company providing physical, digital, and on-demand payment solutions. The Director of Data Engineering leads the data engineering function, overseeing the people, strategy, delivery, operations, governance, budget, and technology of the cloud-native Databricks Lakehouse on AWS. The role partners with executives and functional leaders to support analytics, reporting, AI, and enterprise data transformation.

Responsibilities

• Build, lead, and develop the data engineering team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development. Establish team structure, roles, and staffing plans (including contractor-to-FTE conversion), and cultivate a high-performing, accountable engineering culture. Set objectives, allocate work, and ensure the team consistently delivers against commitments
• Own the strategy, roadmap, and delivery of the enterprise data platform on Databricks and AWS, including the Medallion model (Landing, Bronze Raw, Silver Standardized, Gold Consumption/Aggregates/Semantic). Prioritize the portfolio of data initiatives, manage delivery timelines and dependencies, and hold the team accountable for reliable, on-time execution that anticipates future analytics, GenAI, and agentic AI workloads
• Ensure the production data platform is reliable, secure, and cost-efficient, with clear SLAs, monitoring, and incident management. Oversee the governance model, including Unity Catalog administration, RBAC, data classification, lineage, and quality, ensuring compliance with SOX, PCI-DSS, and other regulatory obligations in partnership with the Data Governance Council and security leadership
• Own the data engineering budget, including cloud spend, tooling, and consulting partners. Lead vendor evaluation, selection, and management, and make build-vs-buy and platform investment decisions. Partner with functional executives to align the roadmap to business priorities, and present strategy, progress, risks, and investment recommendations to senior and executive leadership
• Set the engineering standards, reference architectures, and best practices the team follows, including Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), monorepo CI/CD (GitLab), and pipeline design patterns (PySpark, Delta)
• Provide senior technical direction and design review, guiding the Data Architect and engineers and serving as an escalation point for the hardest technical problems
• Sponsor enterprise master data management (MDM), including the Unique Customer ID (UCID) program
• Ensure the data platform and migration strategy support the future Acumatica ERP implementation
• Champion the company's AI enablement agenda, including reusable data/AI platform capabilities and AI Office Hours
• Contribute to workforce planning, headcount business cases, and organizational design for the broader Business Technology and Data function

Skills

• Strong technical foundation in SQL, Python, PySpark, data modeling, CI/CD, and Infrastructure-as- Code, sufficient to lead architecture decisions and earn the trust of a senior engineering team
• Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain top engineering talent and build a high performing team culture
• Excellent leadership, communication, and influence skills, with a proven track record aligning engineers, executives, and cross-functional partners
• Strong delivery discipline - planning, prioritization, and execution across concurrent initiatives and shifting priorities
• Sound business judgment on budget, vendor, and build-vs-buy decisions
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related quantitative field
• 12+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, data platform, or data architecture roles
• 4+ years of experience directly managing and building engineering teams, including hiring and performance management
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with Databricks (Lakehouse architecture, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog) and AWS at enterprise scale
• Demonstrated ownership of platform delivery and operations in a regulated environment (SOX,PCI-DSS, or similar)
• Proven experience owning a budget and managing vendor/consulting partner relationships
• This position primarily operates in a professional office environment and requires the ability to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation
• Prolonged periods of sitting and working at a computer, including extensive use of a keyboard, mouse and telephone
• Frequent viewing of computer monitors and electronic devices requiring close visual attention
• Regular verbal communication and active listening during in-person, virtual, and telephone meetings
• Ability to occasionally stand, walk, bend, reach, and move throughout office and meeting spaces
• Ability to occasionally lift, carry, push, or pull materials weighing up to 15 pounds, such as laptops, presentation materials, luggage, or office supplies
• Ability to travel periodically by automobile and commercial airline, which may include navigating airports, train stations, hotels, and customer or company locations
• Ability to transport and manage personal luggage, computer equipment, and work-related materials during business travel
• Ability to work in a variety of environments, including offices, conference facilities, hotels, airports, and manufacturing or operational locations, as applicable
• May require occasional early morning, evening, or overnight travel based on business needs
• Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. They are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time
• Databricks and/or AWS professional-level certifications
• Master's degree

Benefits

• An inclusive, empowering and rewarding culture.
• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Long Term Disability insurance
• Short Term Disability insurance
• Life Insurance
• Accident Insurance
• Critical Illness Insurance
• FSA
• HSA
• Vacation and Holiday Pay
• Tuition Reimbursement
• 401(k) with a competitive company match percentage

Company Overview