Director, Data Platform Engineering — Lead the Data Lakehouse

WEX; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

WEX is seeking a Director, Data Platform Engineering to lead the core data infrastructure powering the enterprise. This platform-as-a-product role builds high-performance engines, abstraction layers, and self-service frameworks enabling hundreds of engineers to move faster.

You will manage a team at the intersection of systems programming and data engineering, aligning long-term business strategy with engineering execution while maintaining governance and security across large-scale environments.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in software engineering and distributed systems.
• 4+ years in leading engineering teams delivering platform-scale initiatives.
• Strong foundation in Java/J2EE (Spring Boot, Microservices) and Python.
• Experience building platforms/framework engines and APIs powering data movement.
• Deep knowledge of Iceberg/Hudi/Delta Lake and data metadata management.
• Cloud architecture experience with AWS and Azure; CIS/CD automation.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the 3–5 year technical roadmap for the Data Lakehouse.
• Lead platform-as-a-product delivery of internal SDKs, CLI tools, and orchestration frameworks.
• Prototype and benchmark emerging technologies to keep the platform at the cutting edge.
• Oversee data governance systems including data lineage, PII masking, and fine-grained access control.
• Guide AI governance and real-time data ingestion for AI agents and metrics.
• Set coding standards, lead architecture reviews, and resolve major outages or bottlenecks.
• Hire, mentor, and grow a world-class data engineering team.

Skills

Java/Spring

Python

Distributed systems

Data Lakehouse

Cloud architecture

CI/CD (GitHub Actions)

Terraform

AI/LLM integration

Leadership

Executive communication

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science (Distributed Systems focus)

Tools

Apache Iceberg

Hudi

Delta Lake

Spark

dbt

AWS

Azure

Job description

WEX is seeking a Director, Data Platform Engineering to lead the core data infrastructure powering the enterprise. This platform-as-a-product role builds high-performance engines, abstraction layers, and self-service frameworks enabling hundreds of engineers to move faster.

You will manage a team at the intersection of systems programming and data engineering, aligning long-term business strategy with engineering execution while maintaining governance and security across large-scale environments.