Head of Big Data & Governance Platforms

Booking Holdings, Inc.; Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Booking.com, a leader in travel ecommerce, seeks a Director of Big Data and Governance Platforms to define and lead the technology strategy for a portfolio of foundational platforms. You will shape cloud data infrastructure, data governance, IAM, and data quality, partnering with Data & ML, Product, Security, Legal and other teams.

You will build an enterprise-wide platform ecosystem that enables secure, compliant and fast data delivery, while guiding senior engineers and creating sustainable

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in Big Data platforms, cloud data infrastructure and data engineering.
• Strong knowledge of Data & AI Governance, including metadata, lineage, discovery, data quality, observability, access management, privacy and policy enforcement.
• Enterprise architecture and platform-product thinking—turning complex capabilities into reliable, intuitive and reusable services.
• Proven ability to lead large, senior and multidisciplinary teams in a global, federated or matrixed environment.
• Strong strategic leadership and execution: roadmapping, prioritisation, budgeting, operating-model design and organisational development.
• Excellent stakeholder influence and communication, especially translating technical, regulatory and risk topics into practical decisions.
• User empathy, commercial judgement and pragmatism, making governance easy to adopt rather than a barrier to delivery.
• Building strong engineering culture: reliability, security, compliance, accountability and operational ownership.

Responsibilities

• Set the technology strategy for foundational Big Data and governance platforms, including cloud data infrastructure, data management, lineage, discovery, IAM, data quality, observability, privacy controls and policy enforcement.
• Build a coherent platform ecosystem that enables fast delivery while keeping data secure, trusted and compliant.
• Translate strategic and regulatory requirements into durable platform capabilities, operating principles and clear decision rights.
• Align a federated organisation, balancing enterprise-wide standards with domain-team autonomy.
• Partner across the company with Data & ML, Product, Engineering, Security, Privacy, Legal, Risk, Central Technology and business teams.
• Lead the organisation and delivery model: develop senior engineering leaders, attract talent, align roadmaps, budgets and capacity.
• Drive operational excellence, ensuring teams own outcomes end to end and continuously improve reliability, usability, performance and business impact.

Skills

Big Data

Cloud data infra

Data engineering

Data & AI Governance

Metadata

Lineage

Data discovery

Data quality

Observability

IAM

Privacy & policy

Enterprise architecture

Platform-product thinking

Team leadership

Strategic leadership

Stakeholder influence

Communication

User empathy

Engineering culture

Job description

Booking.com, a leader in travel ecommerce, seeks a Director of Big Data and Governance Platforms to define and lead the technology strategy for a portfolio of foundational platforms. You will shape cloud data infrastructure, data governance, IAM, and data quality, partnering with Data & ML, Product, Security, Legal and other teams.

You will build an enterprise-wide platform ecosystem that enables secure, compliant and fast data delivery, while guiding senior engineers and creating sustainable