Director of Data

Director, Data

Penn Foster has been opening doors to brighter futures for over a century. Right now we are in the middle of something more ambitious than anything in our history: a full transformation from reactive reporting to a prescriptive, AI-powered data enterprise. We need someone who has seen what that looks like at scale and wants to build it.

The Director, Data is not a role for someone who wants to manage a steady-state platform. It is for someone who looks at the gap between where a data organization is and where it could be and sees a career-defining opportunity. You will have real agency, a mandate to transform, and a mission worth showing up for.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the data platform end to end: architecture, engineering, analytics, MLOps, and governance.
• Set the architecture vision and make the hard calls on what to build, what to buy, and what to retire.
• Drive the transition to a fully governed, medallion-architecture data platform and expand certified domain data models across strategic business pillars.
• Compress ML deployment cycles from months to weeks and build the foundation for AI-powered self-service across the enterprise.
• Lead and develop a team of approximately 15 data professionals across data engineering, analytics engineering, and MLOps, including both onshore and offshore resources
• Partner with product, engineering, and the executive team to make data a competitive advantage, not a support function.
• Introduce observability, data quality standards, and pipeline reliability the organization can trust.
• Design and implement real-time and event streaming data architectures.
• Evaluate and manage technology vendors and external data partners.
• Manage and optimize the data platform budget including cloud compute and storage costs.

Qualifications

• 10 or more years in data engineering or data platform leadership, with meaningful time in scaling or transforming environments.
• Demonstrated experience taking a data organization from reactive to proactive.
• Hands-on proficiency in Python, PySpark, and SQL, with the ability to read, review, and guide the technical work of your team.
• Deep familiarity with modern data stack tooling including cloud-native architectures, MLOps lifecycle management, and self-service BI.
• Experience designing and implementing real-time and event streaming data architectures.
• Experience operationalizing ML models in production, including live and batch inference.
• Proven ability to manage and develop blended onshore and offshore teams.
• Strong track record of building and developing teams, not just managing them.
• Experience evaluating and managing technology vendors and external data partners.
• 6 or more years running agile teams.
• BA/BS degree in a technical field or equivalent experience.

Who You Are:

You have operated in environments where companies are scaling or transforming, and you know what a mature data platform looks like when it is built right. You move without waiting for perfect information, ship, learn, and adjust, and you build that culture on your team. You take ownership of outcomes, not just activities, and you get things done through influence and relationship as much as authority.

You actively experiment with AI tools and view them as a force multiplier, not a feature to add later. You draw on experience beyond your immediate domain, communicate with clarity, and seek feedback without defensiveness. You recognize situations you have seen before, which is exactly why you can move faster than someone learning it for the first time.

Penn Foster is pivoting into a growth era with a singular mission: graduate more students and change more lives. The opportunity to build the data foundation that powers that is real. If that does not excite you, this is probably not the right role.

Working Conditions & Hiring Process

• U.S. Work Location Requirement: All employees must reside in and perform work within the United States. We do not support international remote work arrangements for this role.
• Travel Expectations: While this is a remote position, occasional travel may be required for team meetings, company events, conferences, summits, etc. Candidates must be willing and able to travel as needed.
• On-Camera Work Environment: We operate in a highly collaborative, remote, on-camera culture. Employees are expected to be on camera during meetings unless extenuating circumstances apply.
• Recorded Video Interviews: All video interviews conducted during the hiring process will be recorded to support internal hiring consistency and process improvement.
• Background Checks: Employment with Penn Foster Group is contingent upon successfully completing applicable pre-employment screening requirements, which may include verification of employment history, education, and criminal background, where permitted by law.
• Identity Verification (Form I-9): As part of our onboarding process, all hires must complete employment eligibility verification in compliance with federal law. This includes remote Form I-9 verification, which may require an in-person identity verification step with an authorized representative.

About Us: At Penn Foster Group, we are transforming online learning to help learners by bringing together Penn Foster, CareerStep, Ashworth College, James Madison High School, the New York Institute of Photography, the New York Institute of Art and Design, and other education platforms. Together, we create an accelerated path to greater economic mobility through real-world skills and knowledge that enable learners to achieve long-term success in the workplaces of the future. Our history dates back to 1890 when our founder, Thomas Foster, pioneered distance education by offering training by mail for coal miners to get the necessary skills for safer jobs. Today, with the partners who use our education and training programs, we continue that mission of providing accessible training and education for in-demand skills and are building a workforce that's prepared for the future job market.

Equal Employment Opportunity: We strive toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Penn Foster Group by intentionally building diverse teams – in identities, lived experiences, and ideas to create a culture where people feel connected to each other and have a sense of belonging. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion because it is the foundation that enables us to achieve what we set out to do as an organization – from maximizing the number of learners who can reach their goals while giving them the kinds of experiences we want them to have, to becoming the type of company we want to work in.

What We Offer : We offer a robust benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, flexible spending, generous paid time off, sponsored volunteer opportunities, a 401K with a company match, and free access to our online programs.