Senior Vice President, Data Operations

People Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 315,000 - 375,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited paid time off (PTO)

Generous 401K savings plan

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

People Inc. is seeking a Senior Vice President of Data Operations to lead our data strategy and architecture at a petabyte scale. This hybrid role involves collaborating with cross-functional teams and establishing a data-first culture across the organization.

Ideal candidates will have at least 15 years of experience in data engineering with a strong focus on digital media and platform architecture. A Bachelor's degree is required, with a master's or PhD preferred. The position offers an attractive salary range of $315,000 – $375,000.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive experience in data engineering or data platform architecture.
• At least five years of experience in a senior leadership role.
• Proven track record designing and scaling petabyte-level data platforms in a high-traffic, data-intensive industry.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute a multi-year data platform strategy.
• Architect and oversee a petabyte-scale data platform.
• Establish enterprise data governance standards.

Skills

Expertise in data lakes/lakehouses

Strong command of cloud platforms (GCP, AWS)

Experience in digital media

Exceptional communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

Master’s or PhD

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

Kafka

Job description

Job Title

Senior Vice President, Data Operations

Job Description

We are seeking a Senior Vice President of Data Operations to lead the strategy, architecture, and execution of our enterprise-wide data infrastructure. As a data‑first media company operating at petabyte scale, data is the connective tissue across our editorial, product, advertising, and audience development functions. This is a defining leadership role for someone who can operate at the intersection of deep technical excellence and enterprise strategy — architecting the systems that power how we understand our content, our audiences, and our business.

Hybrid Working Arrangement

This position is hybrid in‑office, with the ability to work remotely for up to two days per week.

About The Team

People Inc. is a leading digital media company reaching millions of consumers across a diverse portfolio of iconic brands. Our content informs, entertains, and shapes culture and increasingly, data, at multi‑petabyte scale, is the engine behind how we create, distribute, and monetize that content. Operating in a real‑time, multi‑platform ecosystem, we rely on data to understand audience behaviour, optimise content performance, power advertising solutions, and unlock new revenue streams. The SVP of Data Platform will build and lead a high‑performing team, partnering closely with Engineering, Data Science, Ad Tech, Research, Product, Editorial, Revenue, Business, and Marketing leadership, serving as the company’s foremost authority on all things data.

Position Contributions

Strategy & Vision

• Define and execute a multi‑year data platform strategy, aligned to company‑wide goals across content, audience, advertising, and product.
• Serve as the executive voice of data — advising the CTO and C‑suite on data architecture decisions, investments, and organisational structure, influencing how the company measures success.
• Translate complex data capabilities into clear business value for non‑technical stakeholders.
• Establish a data‑first culture across the organisation, advocating for data literacy, democratisation, and responsible use.
• Lead exploration and strategy around the foundational data products required to support use in both internal and external AI applications.

Platform Architecture & Engineering

• Architect and oversee a petabyte‑scale data platform spanning batch and real‑time ingestion, transformation, storage, and serving layers.
• Drive the evolution of our data warehouse/lakehouse strategy (e.g., BigQuery, Snowflake, DBT) and ensure the platform is built for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency at scale.
• Lead adoption of emerging data and AI technologies.
• Ensure the platform is designed for both technical and self‑serve users, enabling analysts, data scientists, and product, and all other teams which use data to move quickly and independently.
• Own data pipeline architecture across streaming (e.g., Kafka, Pub/Sub) and batch frameworks, ensuring low‑latency data delivery at scale.

Data Governance, Quality & Compliance

• Establish enterprise data governance standards including ownership, lineage, cataloguing, and data quality SLAs.
• Define and enforce data privacy and compliance frameworks (GDPR, CCPA, and evolving state regulations), working in close partnership with Privacy, Legal, and Security.
• Build a trusted data foundation — ensuring every downstream team operates from a single, authoritative source of truth.

Team Leadership & Organisational Development

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high‑performing data organisation including Data Engineering, Platform Engineering, and Analytics Engineering functions.
• Recruit and develop senior technical talent; build a team culture defined by ownership, craft, and continuous learning.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Data Science leadership to align roadmaps and ensure data capabilities are tightly coupled to company priorities.
• Define team structures, operating models, and performance metrics that scale with business growth.

AI & Advanced Analytics Enablement

• Drive the company’s data infrastructure readiness for generative AI and ML applications — including model training pipelines, embedding stores, and experiment tracking.
• Partner with Product and Editorial teams to identify opportunities where advanced analytics and AI can create measurable impact.

Minimum Qualifications and Job Requirements

• Education:
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field is required; a Master’s or PhD is a plus.
• Experience:
  • 15+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, data platform architecture, or analytics infrastructure.
  • At least five years of experience in a senior leadership role.
  • Proven track record designing and scaling petabyte‑level data platforms in a high‑traffic, data‑intensive industry (preferably media, e‑commerce, fintech, or similar).

Specific Knowledge, Skills, Certifications and Abilities

• Deep expertise across the modern data stack: data lakes/lakehouses, cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift), stream processing (Kafka, Flink, Dataflow), and orchestration (Airflow, Dagster).
• Strong command of cloud platforms (GCP, AWS) and experience managing large‑scale distributed systems at production quality.
• Experience establishing data governance programmes, metadata management, and data quality frameworks at enterprise scale.
• Strategic mindset: comfortable defining a three‑year roadmap and equally comfortable making pragmatic architectural trade‑offs in the near term.
• Exceptional communication and executive presence—ability to speak fluently with engineers and senior management alike.
• Experience in digital media, content platforms, or advertising technology is strongly preferred.

Why Join Us?

• Own and directly impact the data foundation of one of the largest digital media companies in the world — at petabyte scale, with real business impact.
• Partner with a technically sophisticated leadership team that views data as a first‑class strategic asset.
• Shape how AI and advanced analytics transform the future of media, content, and audience intelligence.
• Lead a talented, mission‑driven data organisation with the resources and mandate to build something exceptional.
• Be part of a people‑first culture with a strong commitment to craft, innovation, and continuous growth.

Equal Employment Opportunity

It is the policy of People Inc. to provide equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, colour, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, the Company will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. Accommodation requests can be made by emailing [e-mail].

The Company participates in the federal E‑Verify programme to confirm the identity and employment authorisation of all newly hired employees. For further information about the E‑Verify programme, please click here: https://www.e-verify.gov/employees.

Pay Range

Salary: New York: $315,000.00 – $375,000.00

The pay range above represents the anticipated low and high end of the pay range for this position and may change in the future. Actual pay may vary and may be above or below the range based on various factors including but not limited to work location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of People Inc’s total compensation package for employees. Other compensation may include annual bonuses, and short‑ and long‑term incentives. In addition, People Inc. provides to employees (and their eligible family members) a variety of benefits, including medical, dental, vision, prescription drug coverage, unlimited paid time off (PTO), adoption or surrogate assistance, donation matching, tuition reimbursement, basic life insurance, basic accidental death & dismemberment, supplemental life insurance, supplemental accident insurance, commuter benefits, short‑term and long‑term disability, health savings and flexible spending accounts, family care benefits, a generous 401K savings plan with a company match programme, 10–12 paid holidays annually, and generous paid parental leave (birthing and non‑birthing parents), all of which may vary depending on the specific nature of your employment with People Inc. and your work location. We also offer voluntary benefits such as pet insurance, accident, critical and hospital indemnity health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance.