Associate Director, Data Engineering (Contract)

Associate Director, Data Engineering

Position Overview

Havas Media Group is looking for an experienced data engineer and technical leader who wants to bring their career to the next level in a rapidly growing industry. You must be a self-starter with a desire to challenge yourself by acquiring new knowledge and skills, as well as a team player that thrives on shared success. You must have keen attention to detail and be driven by production quality and execution.

The opportunity is to join a growing team as we build our data product capability to service new and long-standing clients. You will help drive success for a broad range of digitally savvy advertisers in a fast-paced and client-focused environment.

This role is responsible for designing, developing, and executing data implementation and engineering strategy across all media channels. Reporting to the Head of Engineering, this role works closely with Decision Science, Analytics, and MarTech teams to own and drive in-house technical development, maintenance, and platform support for all data product development, including warehousing, storage, and integration of deliverables. The candidate will act as a lead developer and the day-to-day operational director across North America for data product lifecycle execution, working closely with database admins and DevOps to manage technical solutions to scope.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Analytics, Decision Science, and MarTech stakeholders to design, execute, and scale a next-generation distributed service architecture for enterprise data management across 50+ clients in North America, using a modern data engineering stack (data warehousing, workflow platforms, and data validation products).
• Manage and mentor a team of diverse technical talent responsible for data lifecycle execution, including:
• Designing and producing novel value-added data solutions for media campaigns.
• Designing and testing external API integrations.
• Providing quality assurance for data throughout the production cycle of deliverables.
• Coordinate and execute maintenance updates to production data management workflows.
• Meet with key internal stakeholders to diagnose and systematically integrate client-specific data requirements; provide technical consultation for data products both internally and to client teams.
• Contribute to the company's knowledge base by creating and sharing case studies, POVs, and training/conference summaries.

Skills and Qualifications

• BA/BS in a quantitative field (such as Engineering, Science, or Mathematics) or work experience equivalency, including 4–6 years of experience in a related position or field, with 1+ years in a technology leadership position.
• Experience building and scaling multi-tier ETL/ELT solutions (Python highly preferred).
• Experience designing and building solutions for API dataflow management.
• Experience with Hadoop/Spark or other MPP architectures.
• Experience with SQL and relational database modeling.
• Experience with data visualization/reporting tools (Tableau, Power BI, Data Studio, D3.js, etc.), data transformation systems (Airflow, dbt), and data warehouses (Redshift, BigQuery, or Snowflake).
• Experience with operations management on Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and/or other cloud service infrastructure.
• Demonstrated ability to multi-task, prioritize, and manage project timelines. Experience with project/ticket management systems such as Jira or ClickUp preferred.
• Understanding of the online advertising ecosystem and performance metrics.
• Excellent organizational, written, and communication skills.

Desirable but not essential

• Experience with programmatic buying or developing in the ad tech space.
• Data analytics experience (Pandas, R, SAS, etc.).
• Understanding of Agile development methodology.