Senior Engineering Manager - Data

We are seeking an experienced, strategic, and visionary Senior Engineering Manager – Data to lead the long‑term evolution, governance, and operations of Workiva’s multi‑tenant data platform sub‑function. This platform serves as the foundational bedrock underpinning our enterprise and customer‑facing applications, operating at a global scale under the highest standards of security, compliance, and reliability. In this role, you will navigate highly ambiguous environments to shape the future of Workiva’s data ecosystem.

You will directly and indirectly lead a world‑class, multi‑team data engineering organization distributed across Europe and the US, including the direct management of engineering managers and senior individual contributors. You will own the strategic objectives and operational policies of this sub‑function, ensuring our platform empowers application teams, supports enterprise integration, and delivers measurable value to global customers while informing decision‑making at the Director and Senior Director levels.

• Develop, communicate, and execute the long‑term strategic objectives for Workiva’s multi‑tenant data platform sub‑function, ensuring alignment with enterprise‑wide objectives.
• Partner closely with senior functional managers and establish exposure with Operational Leaders to align the platform with corporate compliance, security, and governance standards.
• Exercise independent judgment to establish sub‑function policies and practices that drive long‑term engineering success and reduce system friction.
• Formulate and deliver persuasive, data‑backed recommendations to influence and inform decision‑making at the Director and Senior Director levels.
• Maintain a deep awareness of global nuances across your distributed US and European teams, adapting your messaging and leadership style to drive consistent execution.

• Own the architectural direction, scaling, and continuous improvement of the platform’s ingestion, transformation, and serving layers across highly ambiguous technical landscapes.
• Tackle complex, high‑impact problems where data analysis requires evaluating intangible factors and balancing short‑ and long‑term business trade‑offs.
• Accountable for sub‑functional operational excellence, including cost transparency mechanisms, observability, and infrastructure optimizations that prevent critical operational delays.
• Anticipate future enterprise scaling vectors to drive platform capabilities supporting advanced analytics, AI/ML pipelines, and external‑facing data products.

• Model direct and indirect management of a high‑performing, distributed sub‑function comprising multiple engineering squads, providing strong leadership examples for the broader organization.
• Assume full people management responsibility for your sub‑function, including workforce planning, hiring, talent retention, annual performance evaluations, and compensation reviews.
• Focus on leadership development by actively mentoring, coaching, and supervising entry‑level engineering managers and senior technical leaders.
• Foster an inclusive culture of accountability and high ownership where distributed engineering teams are empowered to solve systemic data problems.

• Translate high‑level enterprise strategy into actionable multi‑team roadmaps, ensuring your direct‑report managers are aligned on milestone delivery.
• Ensure the continuous improvement of self‑service capabilities that allow application teams to innovate rapidly and securely without bottlenecking on core data infrastructure.
• Set and track rigorous sub‑functional KPIs around platform adoption, resilience, system availability, and customer outcomes.

• Education:
  
  Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of related engineering experience, OR Master’s degree with 6+ years, OR PhD with 4+ years of related experience.
• Management
  
  Experience:
  
  3+ years of direct people management experience, specifically including the supervisory experience of entry‑level engineering managers and/or…