Director of Data Platform & Lakehouse Strategy

Wellabe

Des Moines (IA)

Hybrid

USD 170,000 - 230,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid availability

401(k) with company match

Health insurance

Paid time off, holidays

Volunteer time off

LSA

Paternity leave

Job summary

Wellabe seeks a Director of Data Management to lead the design, delivery, and modernization of an enterprise data platform. You will oversee migration from legacy Azure SQL Server to Azure Databricks Lakehouse and guide onsite and remote data engineering teams while partnering with architecture, governance, and business leaders to align the platform with strategic objectives.

You will drive data modeling, pipelines, and platform design to deliver reliable, business-ready data assets for

Qualifications

10+ years in data engineering, architecture, or platform leadership, with at least 5 years in team management.
Experience with Azure Data Services and cloud-native data platforms.
Proven success leading large-scale data modernization programs in Azure or similar cloud ecosystems.
Familiarity with DAMA/DMBOK practices and standards.
Experience handling PHI/PII data and compliance requirements.
Strong communication and leadership skills to influence technical and business stakeholders.
Hands-on work with Databricks Lakehouse, PySpark, Delta Lake, and related data tooling.

Responsibilities

Define and own the enterprise data platform strategy, ensuring scalability and cloud optimization.
Oversee data modernization, migrating from legacy Azure SQL Server to Azure Databricks Lakehouse.
Lead and mentor data engineers, ensuring delivery accountability.
Partner with architects to ensure data models and pipelines meet business needs.
Transform fragmented data ecosystems into a single source of truth for insurance domains.
Drive cloud-native engineering best practices (ETL/ELT, CI/CD, DevOps, cost efficiency).
Ensure data availability, scalability, and reliability for analytics, reporting, and digital initiatives.
Collaborate with analytics and data science teams to enable AI/ML and self-service data access.
Prioritize and manage the data portfolio, align investments with business value.
Manage budget, resourcing, and vendor relationships to scale platform capabilities.
Stay current on Databricks, streaming, and AI/ML enablement to evolve the platform roadmap.
Own the Databricks platform and guide adoption by business users.