Director, Data Engineering – AI Native

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• Define and lead the technical roadmap for data platforms, analytics engineering, and advertising data infrastructure. Establish the architectural vision regarding data ingestion, transformation, modeling, and delivery at Life360.

• Take complete ownership of the analytics engineering strategy from start to finish: dbt project structure, data modeling standards (dimensional, OBT, and semantic layer), testing and documentation practices, along with the development workflow utilized by analytics engineers daily.

• Supervise the data platform, which includes Databricks infrastructure, compute optimization, pipeline orchestration, data lake architecture, and the reliability/observability stack ensuring its operational efficiency at consumer scale.

• Promote a self-serve data experience that empowers analysts and data scientists to independently answer their questions without encountering engineering bottlenecks—this outcome integrates platform and analytics engineering.

• Make informed strategic decisions on whether to build or buy solutions across the data stack and manage relationships with vendors (Snowflake, Databricks, Amplitude, and related tools).

• Drive standards for data quality, governance, and documentation to ensure that data is reliable and self-service throughout the organization.

• Adopt an AI-native approach to data engineering: utilize AI tools to enhance development cycles, assess AI-driven data quality and anomaly detection solutions, and guarantee that our data infrastructure supports ML/AI workloads and experimentation at scale.

• Keep abreast of emerging technologies in the data and AI sectors and make practical choices regarding their adoption—distinguishing between tools that address real issues and those that may serve as distractions.

⛳️ Requirements

• 8–10+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or data platform roles within technology companies, including a minimum of 5 years in a management capacity.

• 3+ years of experience managing managers; you excel at leading through others, establishing organizational direction, and scaling teams.

• Define and spearhead the architectural vision for comprehensive ELT/ETL processes, encompassing data ingestion, transformation, modeling, and delivery at consumer scale.

• Possess strong technical credibility in data platforms and analytics engineering, paired with robust business acumen that consistently connects technical decisions to business outcomes.

• Extensive experience with dbt (data build tool): project structure, testing frameworks, documentation standards, CI/CD for data transformations, and scaling dbt across various teams and domains.

• Hands-on experience with Databricks or similar lakehouse platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery) at consumer scale, including pipeline design, orchestration, reliability, compute optimization, cost management, and data lake architecture.

• Proven experience managing multiple teams or workstreams simultaneously (15+ individuals across different functions) within a technology company.

• Strong history of stakeholder management at the director/VP level—you’re adept at saying no, clarifying trade-offs, and building trust with non-technical leaders.

• Ability to simplify technical complexities into understandable language for non-technical stakeholders. You can effectively lead a stakeholder review with a VP of Product just as well as you can conduct an architecture review with your engineering team.

• Proven capability to prioritize effectively across competing demands from various business units—a skill honed in fast-paced tech environments.

• Strong business sense—you grasp how product metrics, growth loops, and monetization models relate to data infrastructure decisions.

• AI-native mindset: you actively integrate AI tools into your work and have insights on how AI transforms data engineering practices, team productivity, and infrastructure needs.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive pay and benefits.

• Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance plans (100% covered for US employees). Supplemental medical and dental plans are available for Canadian employees.

• 401(k) plan with a company matching program in the US and an RRSP with a DPSP plan for Canadian employees.

• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental wellness.

• Flexible PTO and 12 company-wide days off throughout the year.

• Learning & Development programs.

• Equipment, tools, and reimbursement support for an efficient remote work environment.

• Complimentary Life360 Platinum Membership for your preferred circle.