Senior Director, Data Platform

Zynga; Toronto; On-site; CAD 230,000 - 330,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Benefits package

Job summary

Zynga in Toronto is seeking a Senior Director, Data Platform to lead Zynga's centralized data platform and product strategy. You will manage one of the largest data footprints in gaming, with billions of events flowing through a cloud-native stack and a self-serve analytics and AI platform.

Reporting to executives, you will empower global studios, champion an AI-first approach, and build a high-performing team across North America, Israel, and India.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in data or software engineering.
• 8+ years leading and scaling engineering organizations.
• Experience managing Directors and Senior Managers.
• Executive leadership across studios, labels, and executives.
• Hands-on IC experience earlier in your career.
• Deep cloud data stack expertise (AWS, data warehousing, streaming).
• Experience shipping AI/ML systems to production.
• Knowledge of semantic layers and self-serve analytics.
• Cross-functional leadership with non-engineering teams.
• Strong data governance and platform ownership.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the data product strategy for Zynga's centralized data products.
• Champion an AI-first approach and enable AI/ML capabilities.
• Lead a global team of ~60 across regions.
• Establish data governance and compliance for the data footprint.
• Guide organizational change while maintaining global alignment.

Skills

Data platform leadership

Cloud data engineering

Executive stakeholder management

AI/ML deployment

Platform design

Tools

Redshift

Snowflake

BigQuery

Kafka

Kinesis

Spark

Airflow

dbt

Databricks

SageMaker

Tableau

Lightdash

Job description

Level Up Your Career with Zynga!

At Zynga, we bring people together through the power of play. As a global leader in interactive entertainment and a proud label of Take-Two Interactive, our games have been downloaded over 6 billion times—connecting players in 175+ countries through fun, strategy, and a little friendly competition.

From thrilling casino spins to epic strategy battles, mind-bending puzzles, and social word challenges, our diverse game portfolio has something for everyone. Fan-favorites and latest hits include FarmVilleTM, Words With FriendsTM, Zynga PokerTM, Game of Thrones Slots CasinoTM, Wizard of Oz SlotsTM, Hit it Rich! SlotsTM, Wonka SlotsTM, Top ElevenTM, Toon BlastTM, Empires & PuzzlesTM, Merge Dragons!TM, CSR RacingTM, Harry Potter: Puzzles & SpellsTM, Match FactoryTM, and Color Block JamTM—plus many more!

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in California, our teams span North America, Europe, and Asia, working together to craft unforgettable gaming experiences. Whether you're spinning, strategizing, matching, or competing, Zynga is where fun meets innovation—and where you can take your career to the next level.

Join us and be part of the play!

Position Overview:

The Senior Director, Data Platform will lead Zynga's centralized data platform and product strategy, managing one of the largest data footprints in the gaming industry—billions of daily gameplay events flowing through a cloud-native stack spanning real-time ingestion, a petabyte-scale warehouse, experimentation, and a self-serve metrics and AI platform. Operating with high autonomy and direct executive sponsorship, you will act as a pathfinder: empowering our global studios to extract maximum value from central data and transforming the group to an AI-first way of working. This highly visible role is based in Toronto and partners closely with studio leaders, central teams, and executives across Zynga's global labels. Relocation support is available.

What You’ll Do:

• Craft data product strategy: Define, roadmap, and execute the product strategy for Zynga's centralized data products, translating vision into initiatives that empower global studios.
• Drive AI adoption: Champion an AI-first approach, pushing teams to innovate and leverage clean, trusted data for advanced AI/ML capabilities.
• Lead a global team: Manage, mentor, and grow a diverse team of ~60 across North America, Israel, and India—including Directors, Senior Managers, and non-engineering functions such as Product and Program Management.
• Oversee data governance: Establish robust data compliance and governance frameworks for a massive, global data footprint.
• Navigate and execute: Guide the team through organizational change while maintaining global alignment and building effective processes and outcomes.

What You Bring:

• Experience: 15+ years in data or software engineering, including 8+ years leading and scaling engineering organizations, with experience managing managers (Directors and Senior Managers).
• Executive leadership: A track record leading global, matrixed teams of tenured leaders, with strong executive presence across studios, labels, and executive stakeholders.
• Technical pedigree: A deep engineering background—including hands-on IC experience earlier in your career—with the depth to make architectural calls across a modern cloud data stack: cloud data warehousing (Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery), streaming (Kafka, Kinesis, Spark), orchestration and transformation (Airflow, dbt), and lakehouse/ML platforms (Databricks, SageMaker). Highly technical product leaders on the data side are also encouraged to apply.
• AI/ML expertise: A proven, hands-on track record of shipping AI/ML systems to production—feature/training pipelines, deployment, and monitoring. Familiarity with modern LLM and agentic patterns (RAG, semantic layers, MCP-style tooling) is a strong need. This is a critical, non-negotiable requirement.
• Platform depth: Demonstrated ownership of large-scale, cloud-native data platforms on AWS—modeling, batch and streaming pipelines, cost/performance optimization, reliability (SLOs, observability), and data quality at scale.
• Semantic layer & governance: Experience scaling semantic/metrics layers and self-serve analytics (dbt, metrics stores, Tableau/Lightdash) and familiarity with experimentation platforms and data privacy/compliance frameworks.
• Cross-functional leadership: Comfort managing non-engineering functions (Product and Production) and translating technical concepts into clear business value for executives and non-engineers.

Bonus Points:

Previous leadership experience within the gaming industry. Candidates from top-tier tech, consumer tech, or large-scale enterprise tech are also highly encouraged to apply.

What We Offer You:

Zynga offers a world-class benefits package that helps support and balance the needs of our teams. To find out more, visit the Zynga Benefits site.

The use of Artificial Intelligence is not being used to screen candidates. The position is for an existing vacancy.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, which means we are committed to creating and celebrating diverse thoughts, cultures, and backgrounds throughout our organization. Employment with us is based on substantive ability, objective qualifications, and work ethic – not an individual’s race, creed, color, religion, sex or gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, alienage or citizenship status, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, status as a victim of domestic violence or sex offenses, reproductive health decision, or any other characteristics protected by applicable law.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to providing the necessary support and accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities, health conditions, or impairments (subject to any local qualifying requirements) to ensure their full participation in the job application or interview process. Please contact us at [e-mail] to request any accommodations or for support related to your application for an open position.

Please be aware that Zynga does not conduct job interviews or make job offers over third-party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or others. Zynga also does not engage in any financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process, and will never ask a candidate for their personal or financial information over an app or other unofficial chat channel. Any attempt to do so may be the result of a scam or phishing attack, and you should not engage. Zynga’s in-house recruitment team will only contact individuals through their official Company email addresses (i.e., via a zynga.com, take2games.com, naturalmotion.com, smallgiantgames.com, themavens.com, gram.gs email domain).