Associate Director

This role is for one of the Weekday's clients

Salary range: Rs 4500000 - Rs 5500000 (ie INR 45-55 LPA)

Min Experience: 15 years

Location: Bengaluru

JobType: full-time

We are seeking a highly accomplished and visionary Associate Director – Data Engineering with strong expertise in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to lead our data engineering practice. The ideal candidate will bring deep technical knowledge, proven leadership skills, and extensive experience in designing, building, and managing enterprise-scale data platforms. This role requires a seasoned professional who can shape our data engineering strategy, mentor high-performing teams, and deliver scalable and innovative solutions to meet business goals.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership & Strategy: Define and execute the organization’s data engineering strategy aligned with business objectives. Establish best practices for architecture, data governance, and platform modernization with a focus on GCP services.
• Data Platform Ownership: Lead the design, development, and management of cloud-native data platforms on GCP, leveraging tools such as BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataproc, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, and Vertex AI integrations.
• Architecture & Scalability: Drive end-to-end data architecture decisions to ensure scalability, performance, and security. Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend their adoption to keep the data ecosystem future-ready.
• Team Management: Lead and mentor a team of senior data engineers, architects, and analysts. Build capabilities through training, knowledge sharing, and fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.
• Collaboration & Stakeholder Management: Partner with product, analytics, business, and technology teams to translate business requirements into scalable data solutions. Act as the bridge between leadership and engineering teams.
• Data Governance & Compliance: Ensure data quality, lineage, and compliance with regulatory standards. Establish policies around metadata management, data lifecycle, and secure data access.
• Innovation & Transformation: Drive modernization of legacy data systems by migrating to GCP-based architectures. Promote automation, AI/ML adoption, and advanced analytics to unlock new business insights.
• Operational Excellence: Establish SLAs, monitoring frameworks, and incident management processes for reliable data delivery pipelines.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Experience: 15–20 years of progressive experience in data engineering, with at least 5+ years in leadership roles overseeing large-scale data platforms.
• Technical Expertise: Deep understanding of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and its ecosystem – including BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataproc, Cloud Composer, Pub/Sub, Cloud Functions, Cloud SQL, and Looker.
• Data Engineering Tools: Strong proficiency in data pipeline development, real-time streaming, ETL/ELT, orchestration, and advanced SQL.
• Programming Skills: Expertise in Python, Java, or Scala for data engineering workloads.
• Architecture Skills: Strong background in distributed systems, microservices, data lakes, data warehouses, and API-driven integrations.
• Leadership: Proven ability to lead large, cross-functional teams and deliver enterprise-wide data transformation initiatives.
• Industry Knowledge: Experience working with complex, large-scale datasets in industries such as BFSI, healthcare, retail, or technology.
• Soft Skills: Excellent communication, strategic thinking, stakeholder engagement, and change management abilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certification in Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer or Cloud Architect.
• Experience with machine learning pipelines and integration of AI-driven solutions.
• Exposure to multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud environments.