Lead Data Engineer, Ad Sales & Finance

Versant Media is hiring for an onsite Lead Data Engineer role in New York focused on building trusted, scalable source-to-Silver data products for downstream analytics and AI.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a distributed/offshore Data Engineering team delivering work from source ingestion through curated Silver-layer data products.
• Convert product roadmaps and requirements into engineering plans, including milestones, estimates, dependencies, and delivery commitments.
• Design and oversee ingestion, standardized transformations, orchestration, and publication of data from operational, SaaS, file, streaming, API, and partner sources.
• Ensure Silver-layer products are validated, standardized, documented, reusable, performant, secure, and ready for Gold-layer analytics and AI consumption.
• Establish repeatable processing patterns for batch, incremental, change-data-capture, and event-driven workflows.
• Build and promote reusable data-engineering frameworks, templates, libraries, and pipeline patterns to reduce duplicated effort across products and domains.
• Apply modern engineering practices: source control, peer review, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, release management, and incident remediation.
• Define standards for naming, partitioning, schema evolution, error handling, replay and recovery, performance, cost management, and documentation.
• Partner with the Data Platform team to leverage approved workspace, compute, storage, security, and deployment patterns.
• Identify technical debt and lead pragmatic improvements that increase delivery speed, reliability, and maintainability.
• Collaborate with Data Modelers on canonical entities, conformed dimensions, data contracts, source-to-target mappings, and enterprise modeling standards.
• Work with Product Managers and domain leaders to clarify outcomes, source-system realities, priority use cases, and acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate dependencies with source-system owners, platform teams, analytics teams, and external partners.
• Implement profiling, reconciliation, quality testing, freshness monitoring, lineage, and alerting for every delivered data product.
• Maintain source-to-Silver traceability, including authoritative source identification, transformation logic, ownership, metadata, and data-quality expectations.
• Implement access controls and sensitive-data practices: classification, masking, retention, and regional/data-residency requirements.
• Drive resolution of data defects, schema changes, pipeline failures, and quality issues with clear ownership and service-level expectations.
• Set team priorities, technical direction, delivery expectations, and quality standards; coach engineers in data engineering, cloud development, testing, observability, and product-oriented delivery practices.
• Operate a healthy onshore/offshore model with defined handoffs, overlap hours, documentation standards, ceremonies, and escalation paths.
• Communicate progress, risks, tradeoffs, and decisions to technical and business stakeholders; build a culture of ownership and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• 8+ years in data engineering, software engineering, or data-platform roles, including 2+ years leading engineers, technical workstreams, or large-scale delivery.
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering enterprise-scale ingestion and transformation pipelines.
• Strong hands-on expertise in SQL, Python, Spark/PySpark, and modern ELT/ETL patterns.
• Experience with Databricks, Delta Lake, or comparable lakehouse platforms; experience with cloud storage, orchestration, and CI/CD.
• Strong understanding of Bronze/Silver/Gold (or equivalent layered data-platform patterns).
• Experience implementing data quality, observability, lineage, metadata, and production support.
• Proven ability to partner with architects, data modelers, product leaders, and domain stakeholders.
• Experience leading distributed teams and building effective delivery practices across time zones.
• Strong communication skills, including explaining technical choices, risks, and tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with Unity Catalog (or comparable governance, catalog, and access-control capabilities).
• Experience with data contracts, schema evolution, change data capture, APIs, event streaming, and large-volume data processing.
• Experience supporting multiple data domains and global products, including regional data-residency requirements.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code, DataOps, and automated environment provisioning.
• Experience in a regulated, high-scale, or operationally sensitive environment.

Technologies

• SQL
• Python
• Spark, PySpark
• ELT/ETL
• Databricks
• Delta Lake
• CI/CD
• Bronze/Silver/Gold
• Unity Catalog
• APIs
• Event streaming
• Infrastructure-as-code
• DataOps

Location

• New York, NY (onsite)

Compensation

• USD 170,000 - 190,000 per year

Additional Information

• External candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of their locations prior to a hiring decision.
• VERSANT Media is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.
• Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified individuals with disabilities or disabled veterans; request support at [email protected].
• Fair and equitable compensation practices apply; the pay range is provided in good faith and final compensation may vary based on factors such as skills, qualifications, experience, and location.
• VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms; resumes submitted without a valid written Statement of Work may be treated as the property of VERSANT with no fee paid if the candidate is hired.