Senior Director, Data Engineering Position Available In Montgomery, Pennsylvania

Job Description:

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s largest work marketplace,connecting businesses with highly skilled professionals worldwide.

From entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 enterprises, companies trustUpwork’s platform to access expert talent, leverage AI-powered worksolutions, and drive meaningful business outcomes. Upwork’sAI-powered platform has facilitated over $20 billion in economicopportunity for professionals worldwide. With professionalsspanning 10,000 skills, including AI and machine learning, softwaredevelopment, sales and marketing, customer support, finance andaccounting, and more, Upwork empowers businesses of all sizes toscale, innovate, and build agile teams. We’re seeking a strategicand visionary Senior Director of Data Engineering to lead thedevelopment and evolution of Upwork’s Data Platform team. In thiscritical leadership role, you’ll be at the forefront of shapingscalable data infrastructure and driving data strategy across theorganization. You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with Marketing,Finance, Engineering, AI/ML, and Data Science teams, ensuring ourplatform delivers high-quality data to power decision-making andinnovation. Join us in revolutionizing how data is leveraged acrossUpwork and making a meaningful impact on our platform and users.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing dataengineering team, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation,and accountability
• Define the vision, strategy, and executionroadmap for Upwork’s Data Platform to support the company’s growthand analytics needs
• Build and scale reliable, efficient datainfrastructure and data processing pipelines that support real-timeand batch data workflows
• Collaborate with cross-functionalpartners in marketing, finance, engineering, and data science toensure alignment on data priorities and outcomes
• Oversee datagovernance, quality, and best practices to ensure the availabilityof accurate, actionable insights
• Drive technical excellence whilebalancing trade-offs between short-term delivery and long-termplatform scalability
• Foster strong communication and coordinationacross a globally distributed team What it takes to catch our eye
• Proven experience leading and scaling data engineering or platformengineering teams in high-growth environments
• Experience with keycomponents of modern data ecosystems, including orchestration tools(e.g., DBT, Apache Airflow), scalable data processing (e.g., ApacheSpark), and cloud-native data architectures (e.g., AWS, GCP, orAzure)
• Strong technical foundation in building and optimizingETL/ELT pipelines, working with both SQL and NoSQL databases, andimplementing data observability, monitoring, and query performancetuning
• Familiarity with enterprise-grade data platforms andstorage solutions, including data lake and warehouse technologiessuch as Snowflake
• Understanding of machine learning architectureintegration within data platforms, supporting experimentation andmodel deployment workflows
• Strong track record ofcross-functional collaboration, particularly with marketing,finance, engineering, and data science
• Experience managing teamsdistributed across time zones, with a focus on inclusive andeffective remote-first practices
• Ability to define a long-termvision for data architecture while ensuring day-to-day operationalexcellence