Lead Data Engineer, Data Platform & AI Readiness

Versant Media; New York (NY); On-site; USD 170,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Versant Media is seeking a Lead Data Engineer to guide the delivery of reliable, scalable source-to-Silver data products used for downstream analytics, reporting, AI, and day-to-day operations. This role leads a distributed/offshore engineering team and owns ingestion, transformation, data-quality controls, governance, and the operating model for consistent release-ready outputs.

You will partner with product managers and domain leaders to align on outcomes, implement data profiling and lineage,

Qualifications

• 8+ years of data-engineering, software engineering, or data-platform experience, including 2+ years leading engineers or large-scale delivery.
• Proven track record delivering enterprise-scale ingestion and transformation pipelines.
• Hands-on expertise with SQL, Python, Spark/PySpark, and modern ELT/ETL patterns.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a distributed/offshore Data Engineering team delivering work from source ingestion through curated Silver-layer data products.
• Convert roadmaps and requirements into engineering plans, milestones, estimates, and delivery commitments.
• Design and manage ingestion, transformation, standardization, orchestration, and publication of data across sources.
• Ensure Silver-layer data products are validated, standardized, documented, reusable, performant, secure, and prepared for Gold-layer analytics and AI consumption.
• Create repeatable processing patterns for batch, CDC, and event-driven workflows.
• Partner with the Data Platform team to use approved workspace, compute, storage, security, and deployment patterns.

Skills

SQL

Python

Spark

PySpark

ELT/ETL patterns

Databricks

Delta Lake

CI/CD

Unity Catalog

APIs

Data governance

Data quality

Tools

Databricks

Delta Lake

CI/CD

Unity Catalog

APIs

Event streaming

Job description

Versant Media is seeking a Lead Data Engineer to guide the delivery of reliable, scalable source-to-Silver data products used for downstream analytics, reporting, AI, and day-to-day operations. This role leads a distributed/offshore engineering team and owns ingestion, transformation, data-quality controls, governance, and the operating model for consistent release-ready outputs.

You will partner with product managers and domain leaders to align on outcomes, implement data profiling and lineage,