Data Engineering Manager

Massachusetts, US - 347 Congress St, Boston, MA 02210, USA

Boston, MA (Hybrid, 3x/wk onsite)

Grand Circle Corporation (GCC) is the leader in international travel, adventure, and discovery for Americans aged 50+. Headquartered in Boston, MA, we are a $600M global enterprise with 30 regional offices and more than 2,000 associates worldwide. Since our founding, over two million travelers have explored nearly 100 countries with our award‑winning brands:
Grand Circle Travel, Overseas Adventure Travel, and Grand Circle Cruise Line.

At GCC, we bring together human insight and digital expertise to anticipate the needs of our travelers. Our teams are innovative, technologically sophisticated, and motivated to achieve—while never losing sight of the human connection that makes travel meaningful.

We are expanding our Platform Engineering organization to support our growing website, backend integrations, and modernization initiatives. The Manager, Database Engineering will play a critical role in modernizing our data platforms, with a primary focus on migrating our legacy System‑i DB2 environment and business logic to a modern, distributed database architecture.

This is a highly visible leadership role for a hands‑on technical manager who enjoys solving complex problems, mentoring engineers, and driving large‑scale modernization efforts in a fast‑paced environment.

As Manager, Database Engineering, you will:

Provide hands‑on technical leadership and accountability for end‑to‑end delivery of modern database solutions, from design through development, testing, deployment, and ongoing operations.

Lead database modernization initiatives, including the migration of DB2 systems to modern relational database platforms aligned with enterprise architecture goals.

Architect and implement scalable, distributed database solutions that support microservices and cloud‑native applications, optimizing for performance, availability, and security.

Manage, mentor, and develop a high‑performing team of database engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Partner closely with application engineering, Dev Ops, and infrastructure teams to ensure seamless integration across the broader technology stack.

Establish and enforce best practices for database design, data modeling, indexing, query optimization, and backup/recovery strategies.

Drive automation by implementing CI/CD pipelines, schema management, monitoring, and alerting for database systems.

Ensure strong data security, encryption, and compliance with regulatory requirements throughout the modernization process.

Monitor and optimize database performance using advanced tuning and observability tools.

Required Qualifications

5+ years of experience in database engineering, including at least 2 years in a people leadership or technical management role.

Deep expertise in relational databases, including DB2 and modern RDBMS platforms such as Postgre

SQL, SQL Server, or MySQL.

Proven experience leading database migration and modernization efforts.

Strong knowledge of data modeling, schema design, indexing, and query performance optimization.

Experience working with distributed systems, microservices, and service‑oriented architectures.

Hands‑on experience deploying and managing databases in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

Familiarity with Dev Ops practices and CI/CD pipelines for database deployments.

Strong understanding of database security, encryption, and compliance requirements (e.g., PCI, GDPR).

Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence stakeholders and collaborate across teams.

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with legacy‑to‑modern database migration tools and strategies.

Familiarity with event‑driven architectures.

Knowledge of containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).

Contributions to open‑source projects or thought leadership related to database engineering or modernization.

The base salary range for…