[Hiring] Director I - Data Engineering @BAE Systems

Role Description

BAE Systems is seeking an IT Service Owner – Data & AI Platforms responsible for the strategy, architecture, reliability, security, and full lifecycle management of the enterprise data and AI platform ecosystem. This role serves as the authoritative owner of the technology stack enabling ingestion, transformation, storage, governance, access, and AI/ML platform capabilities. The leader in this role will define the technology roadmap for the enterprise data and AI platforms - powering the company’s core data operations through technologies such as Snowflake, Dataiku, Power BI, Semarchy, and Collibra. The Service Owner ensures the platform is modern, scalable, integrated, cost-efficient, and delivers the availability and security required for a regulated defense environment.

• Own the end-to-end performance, scalability, and security of the enterprise data and AI platform stack, including Snowflake, Dataiku, Power BI, Semarchy, and Collibra.
• Establish engineering standards, integration patterns, and architectural guardrails for all platform components.
• Define and govern the multi-year roadmap for services such as ingestion, ETL/ELT frameworks, orchestration, compute engines, storage layers, cataloging, access control, and observability.
• Drive modernization initiatives including lakehouse architectures, cloud-native data engineering, containerization, automation, and reliability engineering.
• Direct platform architecture across batch, micro-batch, and streaming data flows.
• Ensure robust integration between Snowflake, Dataiku, Power BI, Semarchy, Collibra, and adjacent enterprise systems.
• Oversee reliability engineering, monitoring, observability, incident response, and change management for all platform services.
• Maintain strong disaster recovery, platform resiliency, and high-availability designs.
• Implement zero-trust aligned data access, encryption, masking, and audit logging across all platform technologies.
• Govern enterprise metadata, lineage, quality, and stewardship through Collibra and Semarchy.
• Provide clear, executive-level communication of platform investment plans, risks, and architectural decisions.
• Influence leaders across cybersecurity, infrastructure, engineering, and business teams, including those outside the direct reporting line.
• Lead, mentor, and develop high-performing engineering, SRE, and platform operations teams.
• Oversee vendor management and financial stewardship for Snowflake, Dataiku, Power BI, Semarchy, Collibra, and related partners.

Qualifications

• Executive presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders on complex platform decisions.
• Deep expertise in enterprise data platforms including Snowflake, Dataiku, Power BI, Semarchy, and Collibra.
• Communication excellence, capable of translating technical platform decisions for non-technical executives.
• Strong talent-development capability and ability to build engineering organizations.
• Ability to lead engineering and platform operations teams in large, complex, matrixed enterprises.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field (advanced degree preferred). Or equivalent combination of education and work experience.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in enterprise data platforms, cloud platforms, MDM, governance, or systems engineering roles.
• Proven experience leading platform engineering and operations for Snowflake, Dataiku, Power BI, Semarchy, and Collibra.
• Familiarity with responsible AI, governance frameworks, and MLOps practices.
• Deep expertise in secure data architectures, identity and access controls, and compliance-aligned platform management.
• Strong background in software development, systems engineering, or technical program management.
• Demonstrated capability to develop and execute enterprise-scale platform roadmaps.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and shape decisions across a matrixed environment.

Preferred Skills and Education

• Experience in highly regulated industries such as defense, aerospace, or government.
• Experience with large-scale cloud data ecosystems, container orchestration, and observability platforms.