Senior Manager, Data Strategy

Velir; Chicago (IL); Remote; USD 150,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Velir is a remote-first data solutions partner hiring a Senior Manager of Data Strategy to lead end-to-end client engagements, shaping data architecture, governance, and delivery across multiple workstreams. You will articulate platform tradeoffs, align with client business goals, and drive outcomes with cross‑functional teams.

With 8–12 years of experience in managing complex data projects, you will guide Agile practices, ensure high client satisfaction, and contribute to business development

Qualifications

• 8–12 years leading complex data projects.
• Strong PM skills and Agile experience.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end data engagements with client stakeholders.
• Define data strategy and governance alignment.
• Oversee cross-team delivery and project governance.
• Manage budgets, schedules, and scope with client satisfaction.
• Mentor managers and guide Agile practices.

Skills

Project management

Analytical thinking

Communication

Modern data stack knowledge

AI readiness awareness

Hands-on data engineering

Organized & process-oriented

Client-facing leadership

Travel readiness

Job description

Velir is an established mid‑sized agency with a top‑tier portfolio of clients, ranging from the world’s largest non‑profits to Fortune 500 brands. As of 2023, Velir acquired Brooklyn Data Company, a premier data and analytics consultancy focused on leadership, process improvement, implementation, and advanced analytics.

At Velir, we believe people are our greatest asset. Our culture is built on a foundation of trust, collaboration, and continued improvement. We strive for excellence in everything we do, embracing challenges as opportunities for growth. Our success is driven by a shared passion for making a positive impact on our customers, our communities and each other. We are a remote first company that offers competitive pay and excellent benefits.

Overview

The Senior Manager of Data Strategy leads end‑to‑end delivery for client engagements with moderate to high technical and organizational complexity, serving as the primary client‑facing engagement lead. The role requires working fluency across the modern data stack, including ingestion, warehousing, transformation, and BI/reporting, so they can lead technical discovery, articulate platform tradeoffs, and help clients and internal teams reach sound architecture decisions. They partner with technical leadership on the most complex calls, while independently owning the lower‑risk ones.

The Senior Manager of Data Strategy also frames the roadmap around the client’s business goals, the urgency behind them, and the impact of acting or not, so priorities are justified by outcomes and not just scope. They own delivery governance across multiple workstreams and engagements, managing cross‑team dependencies and escalation paths, and are accountable for the outcome of every engagement they lead.

Responsibilities

Strategic Vision: You are responsible for communicating the vision of our data solutions, creating buy‑in for the product vision internally and with clients.

• Leads discovery and problem framing across workstreams, meeting with key client stakeholders to translate vision and business requirements into technical and analytical requirements
• Frames the roadmap around the client’s business goals, the urgency behind them, and the impact of acting (or not)
• Weighs the client’s AI readiness, including data quality, governance, and semantic layer maturity, alongside reporting and BI needs when shaping engagement priorities
• Delivers regular internal and external project status reports to key stakeholders and executives
• Develops data solutions positioning strategies, including business development initiatives such as product partnerships, proposal writing, client extensions, and other revenue‑generating activities

Cross‑Team Collaboration: You are responsible for collaborating with other functional departments to ensure alignment with the goals of the data engagement.

• Submits staffing requests to Resource Management to ensure the right team is in place to deliver against client needs
• Works with functional teams to design data architecture for clients and recommend appropriate infrastructure and tools; partners with technical leadership on complex or higher‑risk architecture calls while independently handling more routine ones
• Manages cross‑team dependencies and escalation paths across workstreams, and keeps developers across those workstreams supported and engaged

Engagement Delivery: You are responsible for translating our data solutions strategy into detailed requirements for other functional teams.

• Serves as the primary point of contact for managing, building, and maintaining positive client relationships
• Owns delivery governance across multiple workstreams/engagements, managing project schedules and team workload to optimize capacity and velocity
• Drives the successful delivery of client projects within defined budget, schedule, and scope with outstanding client satisfaction
• Manages the sprint board for each engagement, including backlog management, planning and retrospectives.
• Proactively identifies, tracks, and mitigates issues and risks, and provides strategies and recommendations
• Helps shape and scope account expansion (extensions, change orders), including AI‑readiness assessments, in partnership with Client Services, contributing delivery and technical input while CS continues to lead overall account strategy

Technical Skills

Tool requirements: Intermediate proficiency across the core components of a modern data platform:

• Massively parallel processing data warehouse (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks)
• Data transformation tools (e.g., dbt, SQLMesh)
• Cloud‑forward business intelligence platform (e.g., Tableau, Sigma, Looker)
• Leads low‑to‑moderate technical discoveries and articulates platform tradeoffs, helping stakeholders reach a decision; partners with technical leadership on complex or higher‑risk architecture calls while independently handling more routine ones
• Assesses whether a client’s data models and pipelines are structured to support downstream AI and agentic use cases, such as clean entity definitions, feature‑ready marts, and complete metadata, as part of infrastructure recommendations

Understands how the pieces above fit together to deliver value to the client, including the ability (which may include asking functional peers for support) to weigh pros and cons from both a technical and business perspective. Senior Manager of Data Strategy are expected to deliver and articulate infrastructure recommendations aligned with a client’s business objectives.

Agile Professional: Well‑equipped to tackle unforeseen situations and capable of jumping into projects and teams at any point in their development. May teach or mentor other managers on setting Agile goals, developing viable plans, and implementing Agile approaches, blending Agile with other PM frameworks as needed to ensure project delivery.

Skills & Qualifications

• 8–12 years of experience independently leading complex and broad‑ranging data projects, across dimensions including cross‑functional, multi‑geographic, and long‑duration engagements
• Strong project management skills, including experience operating in and building Agile and other frameworks
• Strong analytical, critical thinking, and creative capabilities
• Strong knowledge of the modern data stack and its components, including how to configure it and how it fits with non‑modern data technologies (e.g., on‑prem vs. cloud)
• Working familiarity with how AI and agentic workflows consume data (e.g., semantic layers), enough to evaluate architecture tradeoffs credibly
• Hands‑on experience as an analyst, analytics engineer, data engineer, or similar
• Organized and process‑oriented
• Available for occasional client travel, up to 10% of the time
• Ability to speak to all levels of prospective clients: strategic and tactical decision‑makers
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills

Physical Requirements

• Frequent sitting at a desk performing work on a computer
• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

Compensation Range: $150,000 - $170,000 annually

Please note that compensation packages are finalized after the interview process is concluded. We use a competency‑based approach to base pay, which means it is based on the competencies and skills demonstrated for this role.

Core Company Values

• Take the Long View - Ensure the company is built to last
• Be Courageous - Make the right decisions even when they aren’t the easiest decisions
• Be Genuine - Bring honesty and authenticity to all that you do
• Work with Focus + Passion - Display purpose and pride in your work and never stop learning

As an equal opportunity employer, we are firmly committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our hiring efforts. We recognize that we need team members from all backgrounds and experiences to successfully shape a positive employee experience as well as deliver our product and service solutions. To that end, we actively seek candidates who can bring diverse experiences and backgrounds to our team. We know that complex factors and systemic bias can get in the way of us meeting strong candidates, so please don't hesitate to apply even if you're not 100% sure.

At this time, Velir does not sponsor candidates and unfortunately cannot accept those on OPT or CPT.

As set forth in Velir ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.