Director of Data Engineering

We are seeking a seasoned and strategic Director of Data Engineering to lead the evolution and operations of Workiva's multi-tenant data platform. This platform underpins our enterprise and customer-facing applications and operates at scale under the highest standards of security, governance, and reliability.

In this role, you will shape the future of Workiva's data ecosystem by building and leading a world-class data engineering organization across Europe and the US. You will be responsible for driving the strategy and execution of our internal and external data products, ensuring that our platform empowers application teams, supports enterprise integration, and delivers measurable value to customers.

This is a unique opportunity to define and execute a vision for a secure, scalable, and self-service data platform that powers innovation across the company.

What You'll Do

Strategic Leadership

• Define and drive the long-term strategy for Workiva's multi-tenant data platform, aligning with enterprise-wide data strategy and business priorities.

• Partner with product, security, and engineering leaders to ensure the platform meets the highest standards of security, compliance, and governance.

• Champion the creation of data domain models that integrate seamlessly with ERP and other enterprise systems, accelerating enterprise integration.

• Influence executive stakeholders by clearly articulating the platform's value proposition and securing organizational alignment.

Platform Evolution & Operational Excellence

• Oversee the design, scaling, and continuous improvement of the platform's ingestion, transformation, and serving layers.

• Ensure the platform is robust, cost-efficient, observable, and optimized for multi-tenant scale.

• Establish standards for monitoring, alerting, disaster recovery, and incident response to maintain the highest availability and resilience.

• Anticipate future growth and drive the evolution of platform capabilities to support analytics, AI/ML, and external-facing data products.

• Establish and enforce cost transparency mechanisms, enabling application teams to understand, forecast, and optimize their platform usage.

Team Building & Leadership

• Build, scale, and lead a high-performing data engineering organization distributed across Europe and the US.

• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and excellence where engineers are empowered to take ownership and deliver impact.

• Develop future leaders by mentoring engineering managers and senior engineers within the team.

• Drive hiring and retention strategies to grow a diverse, world-class team aligned with the platform's mission.

Execution & Delivery

• Translate strategy into actionable roadmaps and oversee execution across multiple squads (e.g., ingestion, transformation, serving).

• Ensure delivery of secure, reliable, and self-service capabilities that enable application teams and customers to innovate rapidly.

• Partner with cross-functional teams to deliver internal and external data products with clear business value.

• Establish and track meaningful KPIs around adoption, reliability, cost transparency, and customer outcomes.

What You'll Need

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience

• 10+ years of related engineering experience

• 3+ years of direct people management experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven experience managing and scaling distributed engineering teams, ideally in a data engineering or platform engineering context

• Strong expertise in data platforms, including ingestion frameworks (e.g., DLT, Kafka), transformation tools (e.g. dbt), and serving layers (e.g., Snowflake, Superset)

• Track record of delivering high-quality, self-service data solutions in a dynamic, fast-paced environment

• Exceptional leadership and team-building skills, with the ability to inspire and align a diverse group of engineers

• Deep understanding of operational processes, observability, and metrics for running production-grade platforms

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on metrics-driven decision-making

Travel Requirements & Working Conditions

• 25% travel for…