Senior Director, Data Science & Engineering at Unite Us in United States

Job description

• The Senior Director, Data Science & Engineering owns the technical strategy, architecture, and delivery of Unite Us' data platform and Insights product line, spanning both data engineering and data science disciplines. You will manage a team of managers and senior individual contributors, ensuring the group's roadmap balances technical soundness, business impact, and long-term platform scalability.
• You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Analytics leadership to translate company strategy into a coherent multi-team roadmap, while remaining close enough to the technical details to make sound architectural tradeoffs, evaluate build-vs-buy decisions, and unblock complex cross-team dependencies. You have deep knowledge of modern software & data platforms (cloud infrastructure, complex software systems, data pipelines, data warehousing, and applied data science/ML) and healthcare or social-care data standards, and you use that knowledge to raise the bar for engineering and analytical rigor across the group.
• You will build, mentor, and manage a group of engineering and data science managers, define what a high-performing team looks like, and hold the organization accountable to that bar. You are comfortable operating with significant autonomy, managing up and across the organization, and representing the data organization to executive stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & People Development
• Lead, mentor, and grow a group of engineering and data science managers, and, through them, their teams of data engineers, analysts, and data scientists.
• Set and hold a high bar for technical talent across the data organization; define career ladders and growth paths for managers and senior ICs.
• Manage team-of-teams performance from both a technical and personnel perspective, including performance calibration and succession planning.
• Technical Strategy & Architecture
• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for the data platform and Insights product line, partnering with Product and Engineering leadership to balance innovation with business priorities.
• Establish and enforce engineering and analytical best practices across teams: code review standards, testing, CI/CD, model validation, monitoring, and incident response.
• Guide architecture decisions across data pipelines, the data lakehouse/warehouse, and applied data science/ML workflows, validating designs in AWS.
• Drive consistency and efficiency in data pipeline implementations and cross-product data/testing/deployment standards.
• Roadmap & Execution
• Own creation and execution of the group's multi-quarter roadmap, sequencing initiatives and aligning timelines with business goals.
• Manage capacity planning and prioritization across multiple teams, resolving contention and dynamically responding to shifting priorities.
• Identify and mitigate delivery risks before they become roadblocks, escalating judiciously and without damaging relationships.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Act as a thought partner to Product, UX, and Analytics counterparts on the Insights roadmap and broader data strategy.
• Represent the data organization to senior leadership and executive stakeholders, translating high-level initiatives into actionable team goals and reporting on key performance indicators.
• Partner with Application Engineers, Product Managers, and other engineering teams to translate business requirements into scalable pipeline and platform designs.
• Hiring & Talent
• Identify, recruit, and hire the best engineering and data science talent for the organization, including manager-level hires.

Requirements

• 8+ years of progressive experience across software engineering, data engineering, and/or data science, including experience leading multi-team initiatives.
• 5+ years of people management experience, including experience managing managers or senior individual contributors.
• At least 2+ years in healthcare, digital health, or health technology, using Agile delivery methodologies.
• Experience building complex software and data products within healthcare and/or government settings, with demonstrable success.
• Experience with data pipeline architectures (e.g., Apache Airflow), complex software systems, large-scale databases and/or cloud data warehousing platforms (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks), including performance tuning and cost management.
• Working knowledge of applied data science/ML workflows and how they integrate with production data platforms.
• Strong knowledge of programming languages and paradigms, including SQL and Python.
• Experience operating in a regulated or compliance-sensitive data environment.
• Experience with Cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) technologies.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills; ability to represent technical strategy to non-technical executive audiences.
• BS/BA degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Skills

Required

• Complex software systems
• Performance tuning and cost management
• Applied data science/ML workflows
• SQL
• Python
• Cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred)
• Agile delivery methodologies

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, and Vision
• We offer insurance to team members and eligible partners and dependents, including unlimited virtual mental health and acute medical visits.
• Wellness
• Mental health benefits, such as the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and wellness platform subscription, are available to all team members.
• Flexible Time Off
• Take what you need, including volunteer days and mental health days. We also offer 14 paid, company-wide holidays.
• Paid Parental Leave
• Adoptive parents are included.
• Employee Resource Groups
• Join our ERGs to connect and engage with colleagues, like Military Veterans
• Spending Accounts
• We offer tax-advantaged health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs), and commuter benefits.
• 401(k) + Employer Match
• Enjoy matching, immediate vesting and financial wellness resources
• Additional Benefits
• Life and AD&D - a company paid benefit, with the option to purchase additional coverage for yourself and your dependents
• Disability Coverage
• Accident Insurance
• Pet Insurance