VP of Engineering, Data as a Service Engineering

Company Overview
WEX is an innovative global commerce platform and payments technology company looking to forge the way in a rapidly changing environment, to simplify the business of doing business for customers, freeing them to spend more time, with less worry, on the things they love and care about. We are journeying to build a consistent world-class user experience across our products and services and leverage customer-focused innovations across all our strategic initiatives, including big data, AI, and Risk.

Position Summary
As the VP of Data as a Service (DaaS) Engineering, this leader will be responsible for the vision and strategy of the data systems/services, tools, data modeling, data processing pipelines, data quality/integrity, data usability, data serving and consumption. DaaS is built on top of our Big Data Platform as a Service (BDPaaS). This leader will also be responsible for providing data services and solutions for the data and analytics needs of Wex enterprise groups, which is on top of the DaaS layer. This leader will drive the technology development and architecture in the DaaS and Enterprise Data service areas to ensure the platforms, systems, tools, data models, datasets, and services generated from this team are technically sound with strong security, quality, reliability, usability, scalability, performance, efficiency, and operability to serve the fast growing needs of Wex and customers. It's important to balance the near term and long term needs. To do these, you will be closely partnering with other leaders and teams in the Tech org, Digital org, and other orgs in the company including Data & Analytics, Risk & Compliance, the Line of Business (LOB), Security, central architecture & PaaS team, Global Tech Services, Finance, Marketing, and customer service orgs to understand their business and needs on the big data and related data technologies, and guide team's design, development, and productionalization accordingly.
It's very important for this leader to gain a strong understanding of Wex Business, Data from all Wex products and services, and the business logic behind. The leader should lead and drive the DaaS team to gain deep understanding in these too.
This is a fantastic opportunity for a highly motivated and passionate technical leader to apply their deep expertise and rich experience in the Big data, Data Platform, AI, software development, and related areas to develop technology, systems, and services, and empower the applications of them to multiple lines of business with a big customer base to generate real business impacts in a fast growing commerce platform and payment tech company during its technology transformation stage to meet high customer demands. At the same time, they will learn and grow their career by solving large scale and complex problems.
This leader will have technical ownership of WEX's Data as a Service layer and enterprise data service, including but not limited to architecture, technical direction, data modeling, data processing, serving, insights, engineering best practice, quality, security, and compliance. This also includes proper and effective architectural integration with other platforms (especially BDPaaS), AI platforms & applications, products, and services across the company. This leader will work closely with the team members of your DaaS team in a hands-on way, and provide guidance and coaches.
This role will report to the SVP of the Data, AI, and Risk Technology (DART) org, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. This role can also be in Chicago, Portland, Maine (Wex HQ), or Boston. The ideal candidate has deep understanding and rich experience working with large scale data related platform, system, applications, and services both hands-on and as a leader/manager; is excited to engage and build relationships with a wide variety of stakeholders and solve challenging customer and business problems in a sustainable way; is comfortable working directly with senior leaders including c-level executives to provide technical advice and suggestions in the areas of Big Data, Data servicing, data consumptions, and insights to advance Wex technology, products, services, user experience, cost efficiency, and competitive advantage generation; and is passionate about the power of big data and data services to transform organizations and processes across the company, both for company internal data needs and for serving external customers through enabling data-power product development.
It is critical for this leader to build strong and productive relationships with all business unit leaders, acting as a trusted technical advisor to business units and their leadership teams.

Responsibilities

• Thought leader for Data as a Service. Lead and own the technology and architecture of DaaS systems and enterprise data services and solutions in a cloud infrastructure, including their effective integration among themselves and with other systems in the company including BDPaaS and AI platform.
• Build and grow a very strong, agile, and productive engineering team for big data modeling, data ingestion, processing, enrichment, optimization, quality, serving, BI, data insights and analytics technology and platform development.
• Challenge the status quo and hold a high bar to drive for better and better technical solutions to effectively serve customers' and business needs in a fast changing environment.
• Closely partner with the leaders in other orgs, especially the product partners of data in the Digital org, the Risk & Compliance org, and other LOBs to deeply understand the customer needs in the areas. Use the customer needs as a key driver for your technical design and implementation to serve the customer and business needs effectively.
• Closely partner with the other orgs in Technology to serve their needs in big data, insights, and analytics, and jointly build up a strong technology foundation for the company's strong growth.
• Drive the technical vision and strategy in your areas to serve the company's needs, balancing for the near term and long term. This should be done through a close collaboration with your product management partner, the BDPaaS leader and AI platform leader.
• Guide the engineers in your team on the design and development of the big data model, data assets, platforms, systems, products, and services in your team. Make hands-on contributions in areas like architecture designs.
• Actively participate in company key imperatives and initiatives especially those related to Data and AI, to make significant contributions toward the company's goals and success.
• Set a high bar, and provide technical guidance and effective training & mentorship to the engineers in your team, including engineering principles, skills, best practices, and new technology adoption. Uphold strong DORA metrics across the org. Foster an environment of continuous learning and innovation. Lead to build an inclusive, productive, innovative, safe, and engaging team, including attracting high talents from the industry.
• Partner with leaders across the Technology organization to evolve end-to-end solutions that include components of data to modern the platforms, systems, products, and services across the company.
• Partner with the security org and SRE org to ensure continuous improvement and meeting of security requirements, SLOs, and error budget. Ensure a great observability of Data, systems, and services.
• Proactively advise the senior management team on the emerging technologies, competitor system solutions, and trends in the data area that are most relevant to the company's goals and evolving needs.

Qualifications & Experience

• A seasoned, technically deep, innovative, empathetic, passionate, and open-minded leader able to effectively bridge strategy and execution/delivery.
• Minimum of 15 years of related experience in software development of large scale data, platforms, or applications.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in management of engineering teams for large scale Data, Data Platform, and related technologies. Track record of organizing and optimizing the structure of big data team for high efficiency, productivity, and business outcomes.
• Deep technically; very hands-on in architecture design, development, deployment, and production operation; familiar with agile software development and modern development tools and frameworks; holding strong engineering principles including automation and quality as well as best practices with a high bar. Extensive experience in full software development and data life cycle E2E including in production monitoring.
• Deep understanding/knowledge and experience in designing/building and managing large-scale big data and data platforms in production supporting high value business and customer needs with proven track record.
• Extensive experience designing and building large scale data platforms to support the full life cycle of data including data modeling (conceptual business models), data ingestion, storage, processing, enrichment, clearing, optimization, publishing, serving, data quality, data usability, and data governance. Experience in data security, privacy, and compliance handling.
• First-hand experience with the modern data stack, such as Data Lake, Data Lakehouse, cloud based data warehouse.
• Broad understanding of cloud architecture tools and services, such as S3, EMR, Kubernetes, and Lambda functions. Experience in AWS and Azure is highly desirable.
• Experience building reliable streaming pipelines at scale using Kafka and Spark or similar technologies.
• Deep knowledge and rich experience of open-source technology and tools in the big data area and experience applying them.
• Excellent leadership, organizational, and partnership skills. Able to navigate through in a matrixed organization and influence technical direction and strategy.
• Demonstrated track record of growing and attracting top engineering talent with a high bar.
• Excellent analytical skills; Capability in identifying and resolving complex problems.
• An understanding of and experience in payment technology and systems. A strong handle of the challenges associated within payments and navigating a highly regulated environment.
• Able to drive action and make clear decisions timely, leveraging analytics and test & learn. Understands how to recognize and recover quickly from failures, both as an individual and on behalf of the team.
• Proven track record leading through influence, ability to create, communicate and 'sell' compelling strategies at all levels of the organization. Highly effective at building, nurturing and leveraging relationships, even in challenging environments with sometimes competing priorities.
• Bachelor degree in Computer Science or a related field. A higher degree in a related field is a plus.

Leadership & Personal Characteristics
Beyond experience, the right leadership competencies and personal style are critical to success as the VP of DaaS and Enterprise Data Services & Solutions. The candidate will model WEX's commitment to innovation, integrity, execution, relationships, community, and the excellence that they commit to their customers. They will have a strong corporate stewardship philosophy and leadership style combined with the following:

• Demonstrates a collaborative, engaging, mission-driven style with good listening skills combined with gravitas and self-confidence in order to effectively interact with senior leadership and other key constituencies with humility, empathy, transparency, cultural sensitivity, and agility.
• Champions a culture of high standards, pushes for progress, embraces change and challenges the status quo based on integrity, strong partnership and financial responsibility. Possess uncompromising ethics and unwavering integrity.
• Able to operate in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment with a hands-on approach.
• Leads with empathy. Recognizes others, listens intently, holds others accountable, and makes diversity and inclusion a priority. Promotes a culture of trust, transparency, fairness, innovation, collaboration, inclusion, and diversity of thought; empowers individuals.
• Communicates effectively in small and large group formats. Able to articulate a compelling vision and purpose that excites the team and drives outstanding performance and service delivery excellence.
• Talent magnet, talent developer and talent scout that proactively engages external talent and builds and nurtures internal talent; empowers individuals and manages diverse teams to drive engagement and performance.
• Possesses a high level of intellectual curiosity and learning agility. A natural change agent with a combination of vision and execution skills.
• Understands nuance and how to drive change through influence across a complex business. Superb stakeholder management and comfortable operating in a fast-changing environment.