# Senior Manager, Data Engineering

**Company:** [Justworks](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/justworks)
**Location:** New York, NY
**Role:** Data Engineering
**Salary:** $240k – $310k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** Python, SQL, Terraform, Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, Airflow, AWS, Redshift, Datadog
**Posted:** 2026-06-10

> Lead the technical direction and team for Justworks' core data platform. Own architecture, infrastructure, and standards for pipelines, orchestration, and data governance while managing managers and ICs.

## Job Description

## Platform Leadership & Technical Direction

- Own the technical direction of Justworks' core data platform — pipelines, infrastructure, orchestration, and the standards that keep it trustworthy
- Lead architectural decisions on cloud data infrastructure, balancing scalability, cost, reliability, and security
- Drive operational excellence across the platform — observability, data quality, cost optimization, incident management, and SLAs
- Set and enforce engineering standards — testing, documentation, CI/CD, and code review best practices
- Maintain and evolve infrastructure as code, ensuring the platform is auditable, repeatable, and resilient

## Team Leadership & Development

- Lead and develop a team of data engineers, including direct line managers and individual contributors at various levels
- Set a high bar for engineering craft — mentor engineers, conduct architecture reviews, and foster a culture of continuous improvement
- Recruit and hire high-caliber data engineers as the platform team grows
- Create an environment where engineers develop their skills, take ownership, and do the best work of their careers

## Cross-Functional Partnership & Delivery

- Partner with DNA functional teams (e.g. Analytics Engineering, BI, Data Science) and distributed Data Engineering teams to ensure the platform serves the full breadth of org needs
- Collaborate with other engineering teams to align on data contracts, security, compliance, and shared infrastructure
- Drive planning processes that connect platform priorities to DNA's overall strategy and enterprise OKRs

## Qualifications

- 10+ years of professional experience in data engineering, with at least 5 years working hands-on with modern PaaS data stack technologies (Snowflake, Fivetran, Airflow, dbt, Estuary, or equivalent)
- Deep Snowflake expertise - schema design, query optimization, cost governance, data sharing, and performance tuning at scale
- 5+ years of engineering management experience, including experience managing managers or leading a multi-team engineering organization
- Strong architectural judgment - able to make sound decisions on pipeline design, infrastructure patterns, and platform evolution
- Experience leading a distributed engineering team across multiple workstreams and delivery tracks
- Deep proficiency in SQL and Python; recognized by peers for technical rigor
- Strong expertise with AWS services (S3, Lambda, Fargate, Redshift, Kinesis) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
- Strong experience with data governance, security, and compliance in a production environment
- Excellent communicator — able to engage technical and non-technical stakeholders, present platform strategy to senior leadership, and translate infrastructure investments into business terms
- Comfortable navigating ambiguity and driving work forward in a fast-moving environment
- Point of view on how AI is changing data platform engineering — both in how the team works and what the platform enables

## Nice to Have

- Experience building data platforms that support ML/AI workloads (feature stores, model pipelines, vector stores)
- Background in a regulated or compliance-sensitive environment (fintech, HR tech, healthcare)
- Experience with streaming/CDC technologies (Estuary, Kafka, Debezium)

## Technologies Used

- Languages: Python, SQL, Terraform
- Data & Analytics: Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran
- Streaming & CDC: Estuary
- Workflow Orchestration: Airflow, MWAA
- Cloud: AWS (S3, Lambda, Fargate, Redshift, Kinesis, Step Functions, EventBridge)
- Observability & Monitoring: Datadog
- CI/CD: CircleCI, GitHub Actions

## Compensation

- The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $240,000.00 - $310,000.00 per year.

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