Head of Data Engineering

Individually, we are people, but together we are Aviva. Individually, these are just words, but together they are our Values – Care, Commitment, Community, and Confidence.

At Aviva, we help customers build resilience and move forward with confidence. We foster an inclusive workplace where diverse perspectives are valued, innovation is encouraged, and employees are empowered to grow their careers while making a meaningful impact. As we continue to expand our U.S. Specialty platform, we are building a high-performing technology and data organization focused on delivering a modern data platform, analytical excellence, and strategic decision support.

The Opportunity

The Head of Data Engineering is a founding leader accountable for the enterprise data strategy and the design, build, and operation of the entire data ecosystem. Every underwriting decision, pricing model, claim outcome, regulatory filing, and dollar reported to our parent depends on this platform. This is not a caretaker position: the Head of Data Engineering defines the data agenda for the enterprise, owns it end to end, and is accountable for its outcomes at the executive level.
This leader builds with leverage rather than headcount: commanding an extended delivery organization drawn from Aviva group's global data capabilities, a strategic partnership with Snowflake, and contracted vendor teams — and owning its output as if it were their own.

What you’ll do

Enterprise Data Strategy and Architecture
•    Own the enterprise data strategy: how data is captured, modeled, governed, and distributed across every function and line of business.
•    Define and own the canonical data model — the single semantic authority for policy, claim, billing, and financial data — and enforce it across all vendor platforms, with authority to accept or reject integrations based on data quality and schema conformance.
•    Drive the data agenda at the executive level, setting priorities and holding the enterprise accountable to data standards no system or process is permitted to violate.
Data Platform Ownership and Delivery
•    Own the end-to-end data platform: event ingestion from the Kafka backbone, the Snowflake analytics hub, dbt transformation layers, and the semantic and reporting layers above them — from greenfield to production on the timeline the business demands.
•    Lead the Snowflake strategic partnership as the company's key data relationship, directing its professional services and engineering resources as an extension of the function.
•    Drive automated pipelines for bordereaux ingestion, validation, and reconciliation across MGA programs, TPA claims feeds, and reinsurer reporting, and own platform reliability, scalability, and cost as a production-grade operation.

Financial and Regulatory Data
•    Own the data architecture serving US GAAP, US Statutory, and IFRS 17 reporting from a single transaction-level foundation — one data spine, three frameworks, no re-keying.
•    Own the data underpinning statutory filings, NAIC reporting, AM Best submissions, and state examinations, and stand personally accountable for its accuracy, completeness, and auditability.
•    Drive the quarterly and annual data delivery to Aviva plc, owning the relationship with group finance and actuarial data consumers in London.

Governance, Analytics, and AI Enablement
•    Own the enterprise data governance framework — ownership, stewardship, lineage, quality, and access control — enforced in the architecture, and lead compliance with data-related regulatory obligations (NYDFS Part 500, state privacy statutes, Aviva group data policies) in partnership with compliance and security leadership.
•    Own the analytics estate and the data foundation for every AI capability the company deploys, defining what the company measures and delivering the single trusted version of performance to leadership, underwriting, actuarial, and finance.

Extended Team and Partner Leadership
•    Direct a leveraged delivery model: mobilize Aviva group data engineering capabilities, lead contracted vendor teams, own the commercial and performance management of every partner in the data estate, and define the standards and operating model of the function, shaping the case for internal hires as the platform grows.
•    Own the data relationship with Aviva Group, representing the US platform to group data, finance, and technology leadership in London — securing group resources where they accelerate the build and defending startup-speed autonomy where they do not.
Cross-Functional Leadership
• Collaborate with executive leaders across the organization.
• Drive alignment between data strategy and business objectives.
• Support enterprise initiatives and organizational priorities.
• Promote collabor