Director, Data Engineering

Company Description

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass.

Job Description

As a Director of Data Engineering, you will be play a pivotal role in the design, development, and implementation of robust data architecture and pipelines that support critical business decisions, analytics, and product development. This role is crucial in creating a connected data ecosystem that unleashes the power of our first party, third party and zero party data to drive innovation and growth. This data ecosystem is at the core of making intelligent customer and business decisions.

This role is ideal for a hands-on technical individual who thrives in a fast-paced, media-rich environment and is passionate about driving innovation through data.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Lead high-performing data engineering squads, setting clear objectives, fostering a collaborative environment, and driving team growth.
• Lead the design, development, and maintenance of scalable data pipelines and architectures across internal, third-party, and cloud-based sources.
• Ensure data accuracy, completeness, and consistency across various sources.
• Collaborate with data scientists and business teams to improve data models that feed business intelligence tools, increasing data accessibility and fostering data-driven decision-making across the organization.
• Implement best practices for data engineering, including performance tuning, monitoring, and documentation.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies to improve data engineering capabilities.
• Foster the growth of your team members through coaching, mentorship, and opportunities for technical development.
• Contribute to strategic planning and execution of data initiatives aligned with business goals.
• Support the Sr. Director of Data Engineering in executing the broader data strategy and roadmap.

Qualifications

• Proven experience (8+ years) in data engineering
• Experience with media-specific data platforms, including content management systems, ad tech, and digital media analytics tools.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Java, or Scala for data processing tasks.
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) and cloud data warehouses (e.g., Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks.)
• Expertise in SQL/ NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB, BigQuery, or similar), and big data technologies (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, etc.).
• Strong background in designing and building complex, high-performance data systems, including data lakes, data warehouses, and real-time data pipelines.
• Proven ability to manage and scale a growing team of data engineers, providing both technical guidance and career development.
• Excellent communication skills to collaborate with other teams and stakeholders.
• Familiarity with data visualization tools like Tableau or Looker.
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams in a matrixed organization.
• Experience with machine learning and data science workflows.
• Familiarity with media industry standards and analytics platforms (e.g., Nielsen, comScore, etc.).
• Strong decision-making skills and adaptability to changing circumstances.
• Exposure to agile development practices and project management tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence)

Salary range: $165,000 - $210,000 (bonus and long-term incentive eligible)

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, yo