Director - Technology, Data Platforms

Director, Technology – Data Platforms

Job ID: 10042398

Location: Remote and CA or FL

The Data Products and Platforms organization at Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products (DPEP) has end-to-end responsibility for building, enhancing, and maintaining the data, analytics, BI and machine learning ecosystem used by a large community of users (analysts, data scientists, technology partners, business/operations teams, etc.) within DPEP and across The Walt Disney Company (TWDC). 

The Director, Technology – Data Platforms will be responsible for both the development and operations of the next generation data platform and toolsets. This highly technical role will require critical thinking and business acumen to make decisions that align to the strategic goals of the organization, navigating an environment with ambiguity and minimal direction.  This role is expected to drive a data platform vision, leading a team of managers, architects, engineers and product managers with a span of influence across the portfolio.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, development and implementation of data and analytics solutions in support of the DPEP data strategy and roadmap, leveraging cloud-native technology, in order to enable data and insights self-service and agile data management across the segment
• Oversee the day-to-day operation of the platform, ensuring high availability, scalability and performance and a data-driven approach to continuous measurement and optimization
• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including data engineers, data scientists, analysts and business stakeholders to ensure the platform and tools meet their requirements
• Conduct market research and evaluation of COTS products in the big data ecosystem, and foster key industry and academic partnerships, to continuously evolve the data platform architecture to support the growing needs of the business
• Prototype new technologies and implement innovative solutions that enable teams to consume and understand data faster, including best in class BI tooling
• Pioneer technical solutions that advance data security, privacy, and access governance
• Architect extensible technical architectures to deliver the latest in machine learning, AI, and other emerging technology solutions

Required Qualifications:

• BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Math, Statistics, or related fields
• 10 years of relevant experience in Data Engineering and Data Platforms
• Advanced knowledge of Data Architecture, Data Warehousing, Advanced Analytics, and Data Science implementations, including the latest research and industry trends
• Experience across Data Warehouse platforms such as Snowflake and BigQuery, with expert level knowledge in the Snowflake Platform
• Expertise with Data Lakehouse architectures and formats/standards, such as Parquet and Iceberg
• Experience designing automated, highly available ETL/ELT big data pipelines at scale, leveraging technologies such as Kinesis, Kafka and Google Pub/Sub
• Experience with data transformation leveraging tooling, specifically DBT
• Experience with orchestration tools like Airflow
• Experience with Query Federation solutions like Starburst Presto
• Knowledge of data quality practice and tooling such as SODA, Datadog, Anomalo
• Familiarity with data security and privacy regulations, including tooling such as Privacera and Apache Ranger
• Experience with Enterprise Data Governance practice, and tools, specifically Alation
• Experience with BI (Business Intelligence) consumption tools like Tableau, Business Objects, SAS, and MicroStrategy
• Expert knowledge of big data architecture for AI/ML integration patterns
• Experience developing and deploying ML solutions at scale
• Deep experience with data science tools such as SageMaker, Jupyter Notebooks, StreamLit, Dataiku
• Understanding of MLOps practice and tooling, including feature cache and model management, such as SageMaker, mlflow, Google Colab, Google Data Studio, etc.
• Knowledge of trends and tools in data and ML version management
• Knowledge of trends and tools in ML observability
• Comfortable with both technical and business responsibilities, you will be working with engineers, data scientists, operations managers, and business masterminds to build products and solve complex problems
• Excellent verbal and written communication. Compelling storytelling and presentation skills.
• A team player with vision, passion, discipline, and integrity
• Demonstrated inclusive leadership that embraces diversity; ability to develop geographically and otherwise diverse highly technical teams
• Proven ability to successfully operate in a highly matrix organizational system where partnership and influence are key drivers of success
• Ability to work rapidly and efficiently in a fast paced and changing environment

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Machine Learning, Mathematics, or related quantitative field
• Proven leadership within a complex organization holding a high-profile global brand

This role can be fully remote or onsite in CA or FL.

The hiring range for this remote position is $198,932 to $266,860 per year, which factors in various geographic regions. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.