Senior Manager, Data Engineering

ROSTR, Inc.; Santa Monica, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 122,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Wellbeing reimbursements

Fertility coverage

401(k) with employer match

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Universal Music Group in Santa Monica is seeking a Senior Data Engineering Manager to lead data engineers delivering enterprise-grade data products and AI-ready data assets across our organization.

You will design scalable data pipelines, semantic layers, and data marts that power ecommerce analytics and ML workloads, partnering with ecommerce, product, and finance teams. This role emphasizes governance, reliability, and stakeholder alignment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of data engineering experience, with 3+ years in a leadership role.
• Experience with ecommerce, digital commerce, or marketplace data domains.
• Knowledge of modern data architectures (lakehouse, real-time streaming).
• Experience delivering AI-ready data platforms and feature stores.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of data engineers delivering enterprise-grade data products.
• Design scalable data pipelines and architectures supporting analytics and AI workloads.
• Partner with Ecommerce, Product, Growth/Marketing, Finance, and Data Science stakeholders.
• Champion data quality, governance, and observability for AI trust.
• Oversee semantic layers and data contracts to ensure stability.

Skills

Data engineering

Leadership

Cloud platforms

Big data

AI-ready data

Stakeholder management

Data modeling

Semantic layer design

LLMs readiness

Tools

Spark

Snowflake

Databricks

Job description

We are UMG, the Universal Music Group. We are the world’s leading music company. In everything we do, we are committed to artistry, innovation and entrepreneurship. We own and operate a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising, and audiovisual content in more than 60 countries. We identify and develop recording artists and songwriters, and we produce, distribute and promote the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music to delight and entertain fans around the world.

How we LEAD:

We are seeking an experienced and driven Senior Data Engineering Manager - Enterprise Data Products within the Global Data & Analytics team.

You are passionate about leading teams that deliver scalable, reliable, and AI-ready data platforms that power enterprise decision-making, advanced analytics, and ecommerce growth. You understand that modern data platforms must not only support reporting, but also enable machine learning, generative AI, and intelligent applications through high-quality, well-governed, semantically consistent enterprise data.

In this role, you will lead teams of data engineers responsible for delivering domain-specific data products, semantic layers, and data marts that serve as trusted, AI-ready sources of truth across the organization, while shaping how data is structured, governed, and exposed to support AI/ML use cases, feature engineering, and semantic consistency across tools and applications.

How you’ll CREATE:

• Lead and manage a team of data engineers delivering enterprise-grade data products, data marts, and AI-ready data assets.
• Lead the strategic design and delivery of scalable data pipelines and architectures that support commerce analytics, machine learning, and AI workloads.
• Partner with Ecommerce, Product, Growth/Marketing, Finance, and Data Science stakeholders to enable AI use cases, feature stores, and model-ready commerce datasets.
• Champion engineering best practices for AI-ready data foundations, including data quality, completeness, consistency, lineage, customer identity resolution, and trusted order/product/customer domains.
• Lead development and implementation of semantic layers that standardize business definitions.
• Ensure enterprise data is structured and documented to support LLMs, knowledge graphs, personalization, forecasting, and downstream AI applications.
• Own platform reliability, including SLAs, monitoring, observability, and incident management for ecommerce analytics and AI data pipelines.
• Lead the implementation and enforcement of data contracts and schema governance to improve stability and usability for AI and analytics consumers.
• Lead adoption of modern data architecture patterns (lakehouse, real-time streaming, batch processing, feature stores, data monitoring, and observability).
• Guide platform optimization for performance, scalability, freshness, and cost while supporting high-volume ecommerce data and compute-intensive AI workloads.
• Collaborate with governance teams to ensure data is discoverable, explainable, and compliant, especially for AI use cases.
• Mentor and develop engineering talent, fostering expertise in data engineering and AI data readiness principles.

Bring your VIBE:

• 10+ years of data engineering experience, with 3+ years in a leadership role and direct ownership of ecommerce, digital commerce, DTC, retail, or marketplace data domains.
• Deep knowledge of modern data architectures (lakehouse, real-time streaming, batch processing).
• Strong understanding of data modeling, including dimensional modeling, feature engineering, and semantic layer design.
• Proven leadership experience delivering AI-ready data platforms and ML/AI workflows, including feature stores, training datasets, model data pipelines, personalization, demand forecasting, churn/retention, attribution, and other generative AI initiatives.
• Experience driving data quality, governance, and observability frameworks critical for AI trust and explainability.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business, ecommerce, analytics, and AI requirements into scalable data engineering solutions.
• Strategic exposure to AdTech and MarTech, with experience in the music/entertainment industry preferred, and the ability to connect audience engagement, marketing technology, and data-driven growth initiatives
• Experience with cloud ecosystems (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and big data technologies (Spark, Snowflake, Databricks, etc.). GCP is a strong plus.
• Strong leadership, stakeholder management, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Awareness of data governance and privacy principles, including customer data privacy, is preferred.
• Ability to lead effectively in a fast-paced environment, balancing priorities while maintaining quality, stakeholder alignment, and delivery discipline.
• Ability to lead the creation of impactful executive presentations that communicate strategy, tradeoffs, roadmap decisions, and measurable business outcomes.

Perks Playlist:

Join an entrepreneurial, global organization where authenticity, boldness, creativity, connection, drive, and insight aren’t just values—they’re how we work every day. Here are some of the ways we support you along the way (and just a few of the benefits we offer):

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Including 100% coverage for out-patient in-network mental health services
• Fertility coverage for eligible medical plan participants
• Wellbeing reimbursements for fitness classes, spa treatments, meal services, travel, and so much more (up to $720/year)
• Student Loan Repayment Assistance and Tuition Reimbursement
• 401(k) with 100% immediate vesting on the first 5% of your contributions, plus an additional UMG contribution

A variety of ways to prioritize much-needed time away from work including:

• Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO) for exempt employees
• 3-weeks PTO for non-exempt employees
• 2-weeks paid Winter Break
• 10 Company Holidays (including Juneteenth and Wellbeing Day)
• Summer Fridays (between Memorial Day and Labor Day)
• Generous paid parental leave for every type of parent

Disclaimer: This job description only provides an overview of job responsibilities that are subject to change.

Universal Music Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an E-Verify employer in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.

Please note, UMG is not enrolled in E-Verify in California and New York, and cannot support employment of candidates whose employer must enroll in E-Verify, for example candidates on STEM-OPT.

E-Verify Participation Poster:English / Spanish

E-Verify Right to Work Poster:English|Spanish

Job Category: Data, Analytics & Business Intelligence

Salary Range: $121,500 - $200,000

The actual base salary offered depends on a variety of factors, which may include, as applicable, the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, specific and unique skills, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and the location in which the applicant lives and/or from which they will be performing the job.