Data Platform Architect, Team Lead

Data Platform Architect, Team Lead

Location:

Boston, MA (Hybrid — 2 days per week in office)

Clasp is a venture-backed, mission-driven startup transforming access to education and career pathways. We are revolutionizing the way employers attract and retain critical talent, while simultaneously tackling the student debt crisis. (Yep, we think BIG.) Our innovative platform meaningfully connects employers, educational institutions, and diverse talent to drive mutual benefit—using accessible education financing as the thread. We like to think of ourselves as more than a fintech;

we’re a catalyst for economic mobility.

A Forbes Fintech 50 company, portfolio company of SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management — the largest HR organization out there!) and recipient of “43 Start Ups to Bet Your Career On in 2025” by Business Insider, Clasp is driven by our commitment to social impact and innovation. We are reshaping the future of the workforce one opportunity at a time.

Join us on our journey to give power to learners and unlock fulfilling careers that drive positive change in their communities and beyond.

At Clasp, our full-stack Data team is responsible for building and operating the data backbone that connects our go-to-market systems, internal application systems, and our data warehouse. As we scale, we’re evolving the team’s structure: the core will focus on data orchestration, reliability, and interoperability, with some additional downstream reporting & analytics ownership as we scale the business. We’re seeking a strong leader to own the roadmap and execution of this transformation.

You will lead the design, build-out, and operation of the data infrastructure that moves data reliably and consistently between systems, into our data warehouse, and out to analytics and consumer layers. You’ll lead a small pod, define SLAs, build observability, drive standards, and act as product owner for the “data as infrastructure” layer. You will partner closely with reporting, BI, and analytic teams to ensure data flows and semantic models are fit for purpose.

• Own the architecture, roadmap, and operational health of the data‑orchestration layer (ingestion, transformation, movement, observability) across internal systems, go-to-market systems (CRM, CS, etc.), and the data warehouse.
• Lead a team of data engineers/ETL analysts on day‑to‑day project work.
• Define and enforce data pipelines' SLAs, error‑recovery strategies, schema change management, metadata/lineage documentation.
• Lead cross‑system interoperability work: identify how data flows between source systems, warehouse, downstream consumers; design abstractions; reduce redundancy and latency.
• Partner with reporting/analytics teams to ensure data models (via e.g., dbt) align with consumption needs, but shift ownership of reporting to those teams.
• Own and evolve tooling around data quality, observability, lineage, and cataloging; propose infrastructure improvements.
• Present to leadership on data‑infrastructure health, trade‑offs (speed vs. reliability), investment needs, and outcomes. Responsible for P&L management for data infrastructure and tools.
• Evangelize “data as product/infrastructure” mindset across the organization: define APIs, data contracts, service level commitments to downstream analytics users.

• A systems‑thinking, product‑oriented senior data leader: you understand not only individual ETL pipelines, but how data moves through a complex ecosystem of systems and consumers.
• Deep engineering chops: you have hands‑on experience with cloud data platforms, ingestion tools, orchestration frameworks (e.g., Airflow, Dagster), data modeling (star/snowflake, semantic layers), and you’re comfortable reviewing/mentoring code.
• Manager + architect: you are comfortable both with designing the “what” and leading the “who/how”. You thrive in small focused engineering teams and can elevate their output consistently.
• Excellent communicator: you can translate technical trade‑offs (latency vs. cost, coupling vs. autonomy) into business impact; you can influence across analytics, product,…