VP, Enterprise Data Platform

Vice President, Enterprise Data Platform

At Early Warning, we've powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

This role is accountable for defining, building, and operating the enterprise data platform, including Lakehouse architecture, AI/ML platform capabilities, and analytics foundations. The Vice President establishes the long-term technical vision and leads execution of a scalable, secure, and governed platform that enables high-value data products and enterprise insights.

This position operates at an enterprise level, setting architectural direction, driving platform modernization, and ensuring alignment with regulatory, security, and business requirements. The role balances strategic planning with delivery accountability, enabling petabyte-scale data processing, real-time and batch data integration, and trusted data consumption across the organization.

Essential Functions

Data Platform Engineering

• Define and own the target-state architecture for the enterprise data platform, including Lakehouse, streaming, batch processing, semantic layers, and AI/ML platform capabilities
• Establish and maintain a multi-year roadmap that balances scalability, resilience, regulatory compliance, and business value delivery
• Drive architectural standards, patterns, and reference implementations to enable consistent and reusable platform capabilities
• Lead the design, build, and operation of high-throughput, highly available data platforms supporting petabyte-scale workloads
• Ensure platform capabilities support real-time and batch ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption across enterprise use cases
• Enable scalable support for analytics, reporting, data products, and machine learning lifecycle requirements

Technology Modernization

• Lead transformation from fragmented and siloed data environments to a unified, governed platform
• Introduce modern architectural patterns, engineering practices, and operating models that improve platform scalability, reliability, and usability
• Drive adoption of platform services and reduce duplication across teams
• Establish enterprise standards for data quality, lineage, metadata, cataloging, observability, and lifecycle management
• Ensure platform design and operations meet security, privacy, and regulatory requirements, particularly for sensitive and PII data
• Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance functions to align with enterprise governance frameworks (e.g., SOC 2 and related controls)

Organizational Leadership & Influence

• Drive enterprise adoption of platform services and data product capabilities
• Build and lead high-performing platform engineering organizations, including senior leaders and architects
• Establish a culture of ownership, engineering excellence, and operational discipline
• Develop leadership bench strength and ensure organizational scalability
• Partner with Data Science, Product, Engineering, Security, Risk, and business stakeholders to align platform capabilities with enterprise priorities
• Enable use cases across analytics, AI/ML, product intelligence, and operational reporting

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or related field; advanced degree preferred
• 15+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or distributed systems, including significant leadership experience
• Demonstrated success leading enterprise-scale data platform strategy, architecture, and transformation initiatives
• Deep expertise in modern data architectures (Lakehouse, data lake, data warehouse, or hybrid models)
• Strong technical background in distributed systems, data processing frameworks, storage, and cloud-native platform design
• Experience building and operating platforms supporting both streaming and batch data processing
• Experience supporting AI/ML platforms and data systems for advanced analytics use cases
• Strong understanding of data governance, security, privacy, and compliance in regulated environments
• Proven ability to lead large-scale engineering organizations and develop senior technical leaders
• Strong communication and influencing skills at executive and cross-functional levels

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in financial services, fintech, payments, identity, fraud, or similarly regulated industries
• Experience designing platforms that manage sensitive or PII data at scale
• Familiarity with modern data architecture patterns including data products, domain-oriented ownership, and metadata-driven operations
• Experience implementing self-service platform models and reusable data services
• Track record of balancing long-term architectural strategy with pragmatic delivery execution
• Hands-on familiarity with modern cloud data ecosystems, orchestration, observability, and platform automation

The base pay scale for this position in: Phoenix, AZ in USD per year is: $225,000 - $300,000. San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $248,000 - $330,000. Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.

This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate's education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.
• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.
• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.
• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave
• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC ("Early Warning") considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.