Headfarmer · 6 days ago
Director, Data Engineering & Platform Architecture
Phoenix, AZ
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/StaffHeadfarmer is seeking a senior data leader to take ownership of their enterprise data environment. The role involves leading a data engineering team, stabilizing the current platform, and designing its evolution to support data-driven decision-making across various business functions.
AccountingFinancial ServicesProfessional ServicesRecruitingStaffing Agency
Hiring Manager
Jackson G.
Responsibilities
Build, mentor, and scale a lean data engineering team with clear ownership and delivery standards
Establish engineering best practices, architectural consistency, and operational discipline
Lead the transition of externally developed solutions into internal ownership, ensuring quality and knowledge transfer
Recruit and develop technical talent aligned with long-term platform needs
Act as the primary owner of the enterprise data and reporting platform
Partner with leaders across Finance, IT, Operations, Growth, and Marketing to support data-driven decision making
Translate business priorities into scalable data solutions and reporting capabilities
Own roadmap planning, trade-offs, and prioritization based on business impact
Communicate risks, dependencies, timelines, and investment needs to senior stakeholders
Oversee delivery and support of reporting and analytics solutions, with a strong emphasis on Power BI
Ensure data products are accurate, timely, and aligned to shared business definitions
Define intake, prioritization, and escalation processes for data and reporting requests
Promote self-service analytics through well-modeled datasets, documentation, and training
Establish service expectations for data availability, freshness, and quality
Lead a comprehensive technical review of the existing data lake and ingestion pipelines
Evaluate reliability, scalability, cost efficiency, automation, and maintainability
Identify technical debt, operational risk, and improvement opportunities
Define a phased roadmap that balances near-term stabilization with long-term architecture goals
Own the end-to-end data architecture and multi-year platform strategy
Set standards for automated ingestion and transformation, including API- and event-driven patterns
Drive tooling decisions and manage build-versus-buy evaluations
Guide platform modernization with a focus on reliability, scalability, and cost control
Identify practical opportunities to apply automation and AI to data quality, monitoring, and operational efficiency
Partner with business teams to enable high-value, explainable AI-driven insights
Ensure governance, maintainability, and responsible use of advanced capabilities
Continuously evaluate emerging technologies through a business-value lens
Own relationships with data platform vendors and service providers
Ensure clear expectations, deliverables, and quality standards for external work
Lead knowledge transfer and reduce long-term dependency on third parties
Assess whether externally built components should be enhanced, refactored, replaced, or retired
Qualification
Required
Ownership of enterprise data environment
Hands-on technical leadership
Experience in data engineering and platform architecture
Ability to stabilize and evolve data platforms
Experience leading a data engineering team
Establishing engineering best practices and operational discipline
Transitioning externally developed solutions to internal ownership
Recruiting and developing technical talent
Partnership with leaders across various business functions
Translating business priorities into scalable data solutions
Roadmap planning and prioritization based on business impact
Communicating risks and investment needs to stakeholders
Overseeing reporting and analytics solutions, particularly with Power BI
Ensuring data product accuracy and alignment with business definitions
Defining processes for data and reporting requests
Promoting self-service analytics
Establishing service expectations for data quality
Leading technical reviews of data lakes and ingestion pipelines
Evaluating reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency
Identifying technical debt and improvement opportunities
Defining a phased roadmap for architecture goals
Owning end-to-end data architecture and platform strategy
Setting standards for automated data ingestion and transformation
Driving tooling decisions and build-versus-buy evaluations
Guiding platform modernization
Identifying opportunities for automation and AI in data processes
Partnering with business teams for AI-driven insights
Ensuring governance and responsible use of advanced capabilities
Evaluating emerging technologies for business value
Managing relationships with data platform vendors
Ensuring quality standards for external work
Leading knowledge transfer from vendors
Company
Headfarmer
Headfarmer LLC specializes in the placement of accounting, financial, and technology professionals within the Greater Phoenix area.
Founded in 2011
51-200 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageCompany data provided by crunchbase