Director, Data Platform & Operations

At Safety National, we don't just offer jobs - we build careers with purpose! Since 1942, we've been an industry leader, valuing integrity, teamwork, and stability while providing competitive rewards, top-tier benefits, career growth opportunities, and flexible work options that promote balance. With tuition reimbursement, wellness perks, and a strong community impact, we invest in your success-both personally and professionally.

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This opportunity is in the Information Technology department

As the company's largest department, I.T. is responsible for supporting both ongoing operations and our next innovative project. Information technology is prioritized, allowing us to partner with colleagues to securely enable and support new capabilities every day. Utilizing a diverse set of technologies, like Guidewire, Salesforce, Java, C#/.NET, Mule, and Azure, the available career opportunities continue to grow rapidly. Our department consists of agile teams where individual contributions are recognized, and career advancement is nurtured.

Role Description:

As the Director, Data Platforms and Operations, you will provide strategic leadership and operational oversight for Safety National's enterprise data platforms, ensuring they are reliable, scalable, secure, and optimized to support analytics, reporting, and core business operations. You will lead teams responsible for data platform engineering and production operations, driving operational excellence through automation, monitoring, observability, and continuous improvement initiatives.

In this role, you will establish platform engineering standards, champion infrastructure-as-code and cloud-native practices, and partner with architecture and engineering teams to align platform capabilities with enterprise data strategy. You will be accountable for production support, incident management, release governance, platform performance, cost optimization, and modernization efforts that enhance the long-term sustainability of our data ecosystem.

You will foster a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement while mentoring and developing high-performing teams. By balancing strategic vision with operational execution, you will ensure enterprise data platforms deliver measurable business value, operational transparency, and exceptional reliability.

Qualifications:

Education:

Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field is preferred.

Required Qualifications:

• 10 or more years of experience leading data engineering, platform operations, or related technical functions.
• 5 or more years of experience supporting cloud-based data platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar environments).
• Demonstrated expertise in monitoring, observability, incident management, and production support for enterprise data systems.
• Proven ability to drive operational excellence, reliability, and performance optimization at scale.
• Strong strategic thinking skills with the ability to align technology and architectural decisions to business objectives.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making capabilities.
• Ability to synthesize complex technical and business information and communicate effectively with senior leaders and stakeholders of varying technical backgrounds.
• Experience leading teams, developing talent, and fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
• Must be presently authorized to work in the U.S. without a requirement for work authorization sponsorship by our company for this position now or in the future.
• This position allows for a hybrid work schedule which includes a minimum of 3 days per week in our St. Louis Corporate Office, located at 1832 Schuetz Rd. Saint Louis, MO. All employees are required to submit work from home requests and follow our Work From Home policy, which will be provided to all candidates selected to interview.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with modern data platforms and technologies such as Snowflake, DBT, Airflow, Azure Service Bus, Event Grid, Kubernetes,…