Senior Director, Semantic Data Platform

WEX; Maine; On-site; USD 231,000 - 284,000; Full time

Job summary

WEX is seeking a Senior Director to lead the next generation of a semantic Data-as-a-Service platform, shaping the enterprise semantic objects across domains like customers, accounts, and transactions. You will guide architecture, governance, and developer experience, partnering with Product, AI, Analytics, and business teams to deliver measurable outcomes in an AI-native world.

This is a high-visibility leadership role requiring deep data, platform experience, and strong technical judgment to

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, or distributed systems with leadership.
• Experience leading large-scale data/platform teams and driving architectural decisions.
• Deep understanding of modern data architecture, data quality, governance, and security.
• Experience building semantic data layers and enterprise data platforms for AI readiness.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision, architecture, and multi-year roadmap for the semantic data platform.
• Lead development of semantic modeling, ontology, metadata, and governance capabilities.
• Partner with business and product leaders to capture enterprise meaning across domains.
• Build reusable platform capabilities to accelerate data products and AI experiences.
• Lead and develop a high-performing team of engineers and architects.
• Drive platform adoption across engineering and business units.

Skills

Leadership

Data platforms

Semantic data

Communication

Architectural judgment

Tools

Knowledge graphs

Semantic data technologies

Job description

About The Role

WEX is reimagining its enterprise data platform with an ambitious goal: make our data understandable not only to people and applications, but also to AI models and autonomous agents.

We are looking for a Senior Director to lead the next generation of our Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform and build the semantic foundation that connects data with its business meaning.

This leader will define and drive how WEX creates trusted semantic objects for our major business domains—such as customers, accounts, merchants, transactions, vehicles, payments, claims, and risk signals. These objects will bring together data, relationships, business definitions, derived attributes, policies, lineage, and context into reusable assets that can power analytics, data products, decisioning, and AI experiences.

This is a highly visible leadership role. You will lead a team of senior engineers and technical leaders while partnering closely with Product, AI, Analytics, Risk, Finance, and business teams across WEX.

The space is evolving quickly. We are not looking for someone who has already built an exact version of this platform. We are looking for a leader with deep data and platform experience, strong technical judgment, and the ability to help invent what the next generation of enterprise data platforms should become in an AI-native world.

How you'll make an impact

• Define the technical vision, architecture, and multi-year roadmap for WEX's semantic data platform and next generation of Data as a Service.
• Build semantic business objects that bring together enterprise data, business context, relationships, metrics, derived attributes, rules, lineage, quality, and governance.
• Establish a scalable approach for creating semantic objects across WEX's different lines of business while maintaining consistent enterprise standards.
• Lead development of platform capabilities across semantic modeling, ontology, metadata, knowledge graphs, data quality, lineage, data contracts, and governance.
• Partner deeply with business and product leaders to capture business meaning that today may live across databases, applications, workflows, documents, spreadsheets, policies, and institutional knowledge.
• Enable AI and agentic applications to discover, understand, reason over, and safely act on trusted enterprise data.
• Build reusable platform capabilities and developer experiences that allow teams to create new data products and AI experiences faster.
• Lead and develop a high-performing organization of engineers, architects, and senior technical leaders.
• Partner with Principal and Staff engineers to establish architectural standards and solve complex distributed data and platform problems.
• Drive adoption across engineering and business teams, ensuring the platform delivers measurable customer and business outcomes—not simply new technology.

Experience you'll bring

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, distributed systems, data platforms, or related technology areas, including significant technical leadership experience.
• Experience leading engineering organizations responsible for large-scale data, platform, infrastructure, or developer capabilities.
• Deep understanding of modern data architecture, including large-scale data processing, streaming, lakehouse architectures, data products, and distributed systems.
• Deep understanding of semantic data technologies and industry direction is essential. Direct experience building a semantic data layer is strongly recommended.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex business concepts into scalable technical abstractions and reusable platform capabilities.
• Strong understanding of data quality, governance, lineage, security, privacy, and operational reliability.
• Experience building platforms adopted by multiple engineering teams, business domains, or product organizations.
• Strong architectural judgment with the ability to evaluate tradeoffs and move comfortably between long-term strategy and detailed technical discussions.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior technical, product, and business leaders across organizational boundaries.
• Experience hiring, mentoring, and developing senior engineering talent and technical leaders.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineering teams, business partners, and executive leadership.

Preferred Experience

• Experience building platforms that support AI/ML, generative AI, RAG, or agentic applications.
• Experience with knowledge representation, semantic search, context engineering, graph technologies, or AI-ready enterprise data.
• Experience modernizing large enterprise data ecosystems with multiple business domains and legacy systems.
• Experience driving a significant platform transformation from concept through enterprise adoption.

The most important qualification is not familiarity with a particular tool or architecture. We are looking for a leader who can combine deep engineering expertise, business understanding, and first-principles thinking to help define how enterprise data should work in an AI-native future.

The base pay range represents the anticipated low and high end of the pay range for this position. Actual pay rates will vary and will be based on various factors, such as your qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role. Base pay is one component of WEX's total compensation package. Most sales positions are eligible for commission under the terms of an applicable plan. Non-sales roles are typically eligible for a quarterly or annual bonus based on their role and applicable plan. WEX's comprehensive and market competitive benefits are designed to support your personal and professional well-being. Benefits include health, dental and vision insurances, retirement savings plan, paid time off, health savings account, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition reimbursement, and more. For more information, check out the "About Us" section. Pay Range: $230,800.00 - $283,600.00