Senior Manager, Data Engineering

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Our team is dedicated to ensuring you have a great candidate experience, and that starts with outlining our hiring process from start to finish so you know what to expect every step of the way (no surprises!)—click here to learn more!

Are you an experienced builder of teams, data infrastructure, and data systems? Do you consider yourself an excellent recruiter, a skilled communicator, a great issue resolver, and an organizer of people? Does the idea of taking on a data leadership role at a fast growing, values driven company excite you? 

As the Senior Manager, Data Engineering at Thinkific, you will provide the vision and roadmap for a scalable, resilient, high quality data infrastructure to support internal business analytics, data science, and data products. Your team requires a wide range of engineering skills: data pipeline engineering, analytical engineering, and software engineering.

You build high performing autonomous technical teams that use agile best practices. You will collaborate with Core Engineering Leadership to ensure alignment with Thinkific Engineering best practices, understand the production tech stack (our main sources of data), and contribute to architectural discussions.  You will collaborate with the VP, Data and Senior Business Analytics leaders to build the data infrastructure, data processes, and data team that supports the right balance of self-serve data and specialized ad-hoc analytics that will scale as the company grows.

In this role, you will:

• Build, lead, manage, mentor, and scale a high performing and autonomous Data Engineering team
• Provide the vision and roadmap for a scalable, resilient, high quality data infrastructure to support internal business analytics, data science, and data products
• Drive software development and data best practices—agile development, coding standards, code reviews, source control, data quality, data modeling, monitoring, operational roll-out, and support
• Mature our processes around monitoring and alerting, and implement appropriate levels of on-call, reporting, and risk mitigation
• Develop departmental objectives for the Data Engineering team in the context of the entire organization and develop strategies (key results) to satisfy them (we use the OKR method)
• Recommend and help incorporate new technologies, tools, and processes to improve the way we work
• Advocate for and contribute to our Data team’s culture and operate with Thinkific’s core values

To be successful in this role, you likely:

• Have 5+ years of experience leading a Data Engineering team and 5+ years of experience as a senior software or data engineer
• Possess experience working with an Agile process within a SaaS business
• Demonstrate strong team building, leadership, and 1:1 coaching skills
• Can build out a sound technical roadmap based on input from technical and analytical stakeholders, best practices, and your past experience, and then execute on that roadmap
• Have experience with the consumption, transformation, and management of data from a wide variety of sources: production databases, internal business systems, 3rd party tools, event tracking, and event streaming services
• Are effective in working on business problems with non-technical peers in the organization
• Stand out from your peers in the effectiveness with which you are able to lead and empower a team to solve problems

You might be the person we’re looking for if you:

• Are eager to learn and grow—you’ve likely had some post-secondary education or have equivalent professional experience in a similar role, and you continue to seek opportunities to level up your skills
• Built and scaled a data infrastructure and technical team at a fast growing SaaS company in the past
• Can collaborate with analytical teams to align on data modelling best practices
• Know how to prioritize ruthlessly and communicate your rationale to technical and non-technical people in the organization
• Have a demonstrated ability to build networks and community influence

Bonus points if you:

• Already have a strong network of A players to support our recruiting and people development efforts
• Possess an understanding of and experience with Ruby on Rails, Golang, and modern JS frameworks
• Worked at a product-focused company in the past
• Have worked remotely and led remote teams before—you know how to create and innovate on the remote experience

About us:
We’re about the results of online learning and the people along the way! Thinkific is a software platform that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses.

Our mission is no less than to revolutionize the way people learn and earn online by giving them the tools they need to turn their expertise into a sustainable business that impacts both them and their audience. We believe in meaningful, innovative work: we’re building and expanding an incredible product that empowers course creators around the globe while working collaboratively to learn and succeed together. Together, we’ve served over 50,000 course creators and more than 25 million students, and these numbers are growing each day!

Why we think you’ll like working with us:

• Be part of a team of incredibly talented, passionate, and driven people focused on building and innovating on a best-in-class learning platform
• Make an impact with your work—each person has an equal opportunity to contribute to our goals and every day, we get to see how Thinkific is empowering both course creators and their students
• Join one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada and find opportunities to grow in your own career—offering advancement opportunities for our team members is important to us!
• Contribute to Thinkific’s award-winning culture—we’re one of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures and a certified
• Great Place to Work!
• We offer competitive salaries, a comprehensive benefits package including health, dental, vision, and mental health coverage, and an Employee and Family Assistance Program to support the wellbeing of you and your family
• Whether you’re at our Vancouver HQ or working from home, you’ll have the opportunity to build meaningful relationships with Thinkers on your team and across the company through team-wide events, meet and greets with new team members, and regular social events
• Have fun with our team, even while we’re working remotely—join us for an online games session, virtual trivia and paint nights, at-home fitness challenges, or even an online coffee brewing demo!
• Get additional health and wellness support through a lifestyle or health spending account to put your dollars where you need it most, whether that’s subsidizing your gym membership, covering out-of-pocket expenses, or getting new gear
• Enjoy our open vacation policy and flexible work environment, because we know the importance of having a great work-life balance (and sometimes, you do your best work in slippers)
• Learn and Grow is one of our values and we take it seriously, providing opportunities through lunch and learns, training, workshops, mentorship, and our $1500 education allowance
• Grow your career AND your family at Thinkific—you’ll be taken care of with our parental leave top-ups as you add to your family
• Meet the many @dogsofthinkific (and yes, they’re as cute and cuddly as they look)
• Work with the hardware you’re most comfortable with, and upgrade or replace your system when you need to with our technology bonus
• Get set up for success, whether that’s at the office or at home. Whether you need a monitor, laptop stand, keyboard, mouse, or even a desk, we’ll work to ensure you have what you need to do your best work
• Be confident bringing your whole self to work—we’re proud to be an inclusive company with a diverse team and values grounded in ethics and equality
• Here at Thinkific, we know that the different perspectives on our team have led to amazing ideas, more innovation, and, ultimately, our success as a company. Our team welcomes applicants of all backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, identities, and statuses. Whoever you are—we can’t wait to meet you!

Tagged as: data engineering