Head of Data & AI Strategy

Traveltechessentialist; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 194,000 - 432,000; Full time

Job summary

Navan, a Nasdaq-listed global AI-powered business travel and expense platform, seeks a Senior Director of Data to drive enterprise data strategy and AI readiness. You will lead data engineering, analytics, and data science teams, scale modern data infrastructure, and deploy production ML models.

The role emphasizes a fearless, data-driven culture and strategic collaboration with business partners. The ideal candidate has 10+ years in leadership across data domains, hands-on ML tooling

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive leadership across data engineering, analytics, and data science.
• Proven track record of managing data engineering and ML teams while fostering a data-driven culture.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of Python, SQL, ETL tools, cloud data warehouses, and major ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn).
• Deep expertise in pipeline design, streaming data architectures, MLOps, and feature store management.
• Master's or Ph.D. in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, or related field.
• Excellent capability to translate complex technical concepts into clear strategic insights for non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute enterprise data, AI data readiness, and analytics strategy.
• Champion a data-driven culture and elevate data literacy and self-service analytics.
• Build, mentor, and lead teams of data engineers, data scientists, and analysts.
• Drive AI data strategy and lifecycle management of ML models and analytics.
• Oversee end-to-end data pipelines, data warehouses, data lakes, and MLOps infrastructure.
• Establish governance policies for data quality, security, and compliance; deliver executive dashboards and KPIs.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic vision

Communication

Python

SQL

ML frameworks

Data governance

Education

Master's or Ph.D. in Data Science/CS

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

scikit-learn

Airflow

dbt

Job description

Navan, a Nasdaq-listed global AI-powered business travel and expense platform, seeks a Senior Director of Data to drive enterprise data strategy and AI readiness. You will lead data engineering, analytics, and data science teams, scale modern data infrastructure, and deploy production ML models.

The role emphasizes a fearless, data-driven culture and strategic collaboration with business partners. The ideal candidate has 10+ years in leadership across data domains, hands-on ML tooling