Director Data Engineering

Director Data Engineering Job Locations US-CO-Littleton Job Category Information Technology ID 2026-11299 Shift US - Weekday days Overview CPI Card Group is a payment technology company and leading provider of credit, debit and prepaid solutions delivered physically, digitally and on-demand. CPI helps our customers foster connections and build their brands through innovative and reliable solutions, including financial payment cards, personalization and fulfillment, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) instant issuance. Learn more at The Director of Data Engineering leads CPI Card Group's data engineering function and is accountable for building, operating, and scaling the company's cloud-native Databricks Lakehouse on AWS. This role owns the people, delivery, and technology of the data platform - hiring and developing the team, setting the engineering strategy and roadmap, managing the budget and vendor relationships, and ensuring the platform reliably powers analytics, reporting, and AI across the enterprise. Reporting to the SVP, Business Technology and Data, the Director is both a technical leader and a people leader, translating CPI's "Data-First" transformation strategy into an organized, high-performing team and a dependable production platform, while partnering with executives and functional leaders to turn data into a strategic asset. Responsibilities Team Leadership and Organizational Development (25%) - Build, lead, and develop the data engineering team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development. Establish team structure, roles, and staffing plans (including contractor-to-FTE conversion), and cultivate a high-performing, accountable engineering culture. Set objectives, allocate work, and ensure the team consistently delivers against commitments - Data Engineering Strategy and Delivery (25%) - Own the strategy, roadmap, and delivery of the enterprise data platform on Databricks and AWS, including the Medallion model (Landing, Bronze Raw, Silver Standardized, Gold Consumption/Aggregates/Semantic). Prioritize the portfolio of data initiatives, manage delivery timelines and dependencies, and hold the team accountable for reliable, on-time execution that anticipates future analytics, GenAI, and agentic AI workloads. - Platform Operations, Reliability, and Governance (20%) - Ensure the production data platform is reliable, secure, and cost-efficient, with clear SLAs, monitoring, and incident management. Oversee the governance model, including Unity Catalog administration, RBAC, data classification, lineage, and quality, ensuring compliance with SOX, PCI-DSS, and other regulatory obligations in partnership with the Data Governance Council and security leadership. - Budget, Vendor, and Stakeholder Management (15%) - Own the data engineering budget, including cloud spend, tooling, and consulting partners. Lead vendor evaluation, selection, and management, and make build-vs-buy and platform investment decisions. Partner with functional executives to align the roadmap to business priorities, and present strategy, progress, risks, and investment recommendations to senior and executive leadership. - Technical Direction and Standards (15%) - Set the engineering standards, reference architectures, and best practices the team follows, including Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), monorepo CI/CD (GitLab), and pipeline design patterns (PySpark, Delta). - Provide senior technical direction and design review, guiding the Data Architect and engineers and serving as an escalation point for the hardest technical problems. - Sponsor enterprise master data management (MDM), including the Unique Customer ID (UCID) program. - Ensure the data platform and migration strategy support the future Acumatica ERP implementation. - Champion the company's AI enablement agenda, including reusable data/AI platfor capabilities and AI Office Hours. - Contribute to workforce planning, headcount business cases, and organizational design for the broader Business Technology and Data function. Qualifications - Strong technical foundation in SQL, Python, PySpark, data modeling, CI/CD, and Infrastructure-as- Code, sufficient to lead architecture decisions and earn the trust of a senior engineering team. - Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain top engineering talent and build a high performing team culture. - Excellent leadership, communication, and influence skills, with a proven track record aligning engineers, executives, and cross-functional partners. - Strong delivery discipline - planning, prioritization, and execution across concurrent initiatives and shifting priorities. - Sound business judgment on budget, vendor, and build-vs-buy decisions. - Databricks and/or AWS professional-level certifications preferred. - The Director of Data Engineering has full leadership authority over the data engineering team, its roadmap, standards, and day-to-day delivery, and makes hiring, staffing, and performance decisions within approved headcount. - The role owns technical and operational decisions for the data platform and manages the associated budget and vendor relationships. Decisions involving material new investment, enterprise-wide vendor commitments, changes to headcount plan, or significant shifts in regulatory risk posture are made in partnership with the SVP, Business Technology and Data and executive leadership. - This is a people-leadership role responsible for the data engineering team (direct and matrixed), including internal engineers and external consulting partners. - The Director owns the data engineering budget (cloud, tooling, and services) and is accountable for the enterprise data platform serving all CPI business units, underpinning a multi-year transformation with projected annualized ROI of $10-15M and forming the technical foundation for the company's AI strategy. Requirements: - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related quantitative field; Master's degree preferred. - 12+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, data platform, or data architecture roles. - 4+ years of experience directly managing and building engineering teams, including hiring and performance management. - 5+ years of hands-on experience with Databricks (Lakehouse architecture, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog) and AWS at enterprise scale. - Demonstrated ownership of platform delivery and operations in a regulated environment (SOX,PCI-DSS, or similar). - Proven experience owning a budget and managing vendor/consulting partner relationships. Physical Demands: - This position primarily operates in a professional office environment and requires the ability to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation. - Prolonged periods of sitting and working at a computer, including extensive use of a keyboard, mouse, and telephone. Frequent viewing of computer monitors and electronic devices requiring close visual attention. - Regular verbal communication and active listening during in-person, virtual, and telephone meetings. Ability to occasionally stand, walk, bend, reach, and move throughout office and meeting spaces. - Ability to occasionally lift, carry, push, or pull materials weighing up to 15 pounds, such as laptops, presentation materials, luggage, or office supplies. Ability to travel periodically by automobile and commercial airline, which may include navigating airports, trainstations, hotels, and customer or company locations. - Ability to transport and manage personal luggage, computer equipment, and work-related materials during business travel. Ability to work in a variety of environments, including offices, conference facilities, hotels, airports, and manufacturing or o