Head of Unified Data Platform & AI-Driven Engineering

Overleaf Enterprise; North East; On-site; GBP 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Digital Science in the North East, UK, seeks a VP of Technology, Platform to unify a fragmented portfolio into a single data platform and shared services stack. You will lead engineering practice, define the Target Operating Model and drive the transformation across product and engineering teams.

You will collaborate with senior leaders to deliver scalable, auditable data foundations, manage licensing and access, and steer AI-enabled development while maintaining customer commitments and revenue

Qualifications

• Senior engineering leader with a track record of defining and delivering platform strategy that unifies a fragmented, acquisition-built portfolio into an interoperable ecosystem.
• Proven delivery of a large-scale shared data platform (ingestion, processing, enrichment and delivery), including data quality, lineage and governance.
• Experience building shared platform services such as identity and access, authorisation, tenancy and entitlements, observability and licensing.
• Experience designing and rolling out an engineering operating model and standards across multiple teams, sites or businesses, and leading change in long-established teams.
• Experience leading leaders: building and developing a senior team across architecture, data, infrastructure, quality and engineering.
• Strong grounding in modern engineering practice: cloud infrastructure, DevOps, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, security and resilience.
• Sound build / buy / integrate judgement and the ability to make decisions early, with pragmatic trade-offs between common foundations and product needs.
• Able to deliver progressively without putting current customer commitments at risk.
• Influences and builds consensus with product leaders, peers and executives; communicates clearly with technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Engineering strategy and operating model: define best practice, design a single Target Operating Model, and lead transformation across engineering.
• Unified data platform: deliver a single data platform, consolidate ingestion, and establish reusable enrichment as a platform capability.
• Shared platform services: set strategy for central services, build or integrate authentication, licensing, logging and move implementations onto them.
• Architecture and engineering standards: establish pragmatic target architecture, create a review board, and set standards for DevOps, IaC, pipelines, monitoring and security.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Platform strategy

Data platform

Engineering operating model

Team leadership

Cloud & DevOps

CI/CD

Stakeholder communication

AI-enabled development

Job description

Digital Science in the North East, UK, seeks a VP of Technology, Platform to unify a fragmented portfolio into a single data platform and shared services stack. You will lead engineering practice, define the Target Operating Model and drive the transformation across product and engineering teams.

You will collaborate with senior leaders to deliver scalable, auditable data foundations, manage licensing and access, and steer AI-enabled development while maintaining customer commitments and revenue