Director, Data Platform & AI Strategy

Ashdown Group; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 135,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Ashdown Group is partnering with a leading international data organisation to appoint a Director of Data Engineering to shape and lead its next phase of data platform development.

This is a high-impact senior leadership opportunity for an established Head of Data, Director of Data Engineering or senior data engineering leader who combines strategic vision with genuine technical depth. Central London Hybrid Up to £150,000.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in data engineering with leadership experience
• Experience designing and operating enterprise-scale data platforms
• Strong cloud data architecture, data modelling and governance expertise

Responsibilities

• Define and own the enterprise data architecture and technical roadmap
• Lead development of a scalable modern cloud data platform
• Own data modelling, architecture, governance, quality and operational resilience
• Build data foundations to support AI, ML, vector search and advanced analytics
• Establish DataOps, CI/CD, observability and data quality practices
• Lead and develop a high-performing data engineering function
• Partner with Product, Engineering and Data Science to turn data into commercial value
• Own budgets, vendors and cloud cost optimisation

Skills

Data leadership

Data architecture

Cloud data engineering

Team leadership

Strategic planning

Tools

Snowflake

Databricks

BigQuery

SQL

Python

Job description

Ashdown Group is partnering with a leading international data organisation to appoint a Director of Data Engineering to shape and lead its next phase of data platform development.

This is a high-impact senior leadership opportunity for an established Head of Data, Director of Data Engineering or senior data engineering leader who combines strategic vision with genuine technical depth. Central London Hybrid Up to £150,000.