Senior Director, Data Platform Engineering

SimpliSafe is a technology-driven home security company with a mission to keep Every Home Secure. We operate always-on systems across devices, professional monitoring, logistics, and customer experience—generating high-volume, event-driven data that is foundational to how the company operates and scales in a reliable, cost-efficient, and SLA-driven manner. 

To support our next phase of growth, SimpliSafe is investing in a modern, cloud-native data platform that treats data as a durable enterprise asset. This is a chance to define and build the data backbone of a growth company from the ground up. 

We’re embracing a hybrid work model that enables our teams to split their time between office and home. Hybrid for us means we expect our teams to come together in our state-of-the-art office on two core days, typically Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday – working together in person and choosing where they work for the remainder of the week. We all benefit from flexibility and get to use the best of both worlds to get our work done.

Well, we’re growing and thriving. So, we need smart, talented, and humble people who share our values to join us as we disrupt the home security space and relentlessly pursue our mission of keeping Every Home Secure.

The Senior Director, Data Platform Engineering is accountable for architecting, building, and operating SimpliSafe’s core data platform using a lakehouse / medallion architecture (Bronze / Silver / Gold) and modern cloud-native engineering practices. 

This leader owns the technical foundation and platform operating model that enables trusted analytics, operational decisioning, and AI/ML use cases across the enterprise—while partnering with business data owners and governance leaders who are accountable for data definitions, BI/analytics, AI/ML, and business outcomes. 

This is a senior enterprise engineering role with production accountability. 

Platform Architecture & Medallion Implementation 

• Architect, build, and implement a modern lakehouse platform using Databricks or equivalent technologies, cloud object storage, and best-in-class open-source tooling. 
• Establish and operationalize medallion standards for ingestion, transformation patterns, performance, schema evolution, and data lifecycle management. 
• Design scalable, resilient ingestion and transformation frameworks supporting core enterprise domains (customer, device/telemetry, monitoring events, operations, finance, supply chain, marketing). 
• Lead migration from legacy pipelines and systems including dual-run strategies and decommissioning. 
• Manage technical debt deliberately and evolve the platform as scale and use cases expand. 
• Drive strategy and execution using partners and internal resources. 
• Drive the execution of enterprise-wide, cross-functional data initiatives by serving as the technical and delivery lead. This includes influencing senior stakeholders and resolving competing priorities. 
• Success in this role requires designing a platform that enables domain-aligned teams to build and own Silver/Gold data products independently, without centralized bottlenecks.

Real-Time & Event-Driven Data Engineering 

• Build and scale event-driven and streaming data pipelines for near real-time operational and product use cases. 
• Implement robust, streaming data ingestion architectures with clear reliability and observability standards. 
• Ensure real-time and batch pipelines coexist cleanly with consistent governance hooks, lineage, and quality controls. 

Platform Operating Model, Reliability & Cost Discipline 

• Own the data platform operating model including intake, prioritization, release management, and engineering standards. 
• Be accountable for platform reliability and data SLAs including incident response and root-cause remediation. 
• Implement production-grade observability and on-call practices. 
• Drive platform cost management and optimization. 

Engineering Leadership & Delivery 

• Build, lead, and scale a high-performing global team of 10–20+ data platform and data engineers. 
• Set a high bar for engineering rigor including CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, automated testing, and secure-by-default patterns. 
• Remain hands-on at the architectural level as an escalation point for complex issues.

Governance Enablement (Without Owning Business Definitions) 

• Partner with data owners and governance leaders to enable enterprise governance through platform capabilities such as access controls, lineage, observability, and data quality frameworks.
  • Note: This role does not own analytics engineering, BI reporting, business metric definitions, or domain-level semantic modeling. 

Experience 

• 10+ years in data engineering, platform engineering, or distributed systems roles. 
• 5+ years leading teams delivering enterprise-scale data platforms in production. 
• Proven history modernizing or rebuilding data platforms with measurable outcomes. 
• Strong track record managing third-party partners (onshore and offshore). 

Technical Expertise 

• Deep hands-on experience with Databricks and/or Snowflake, Spark, SQL, Delta Lake, Data Hub, and cloud object storage.1 
• Ability to drive selection around an optimized set of tooling. 
• Experience implementing medallion architectures and scalable transformation frameworks.
• Strong experience with streaming and event-driven data systems. 
• Solid understanding of cloud security and cost optimization. 

Leadership Profile 

• Enterprise-minded leader able to influence executives and earn credibility with engineers. 
• Pragmatic, delivery-oriented, and comfortable owning production outcomes. 
• Consultative style with clear boundary management. 

You’ll Stand Out If You… 

• Built and operated a modern lakehouse platform in production. 
• Led real-time or event-driven data pipelines at scale. 
• Owned platform reliability and data SLAs. 
• Migrated and decommissioned legacy platforms. 
• Managed cloud data platform costs at scale. 
• Partnered effectively with governance and analytics teams. 
• Led and challenged external consulting partners. 

• Customer Obsessed - Building deep empathy for our customers, putting them at the core of our work, and developing strong, long-term relationships with them.
• Aim High - Always challenging ourselves and others to raise the bar.
• No Ego - Maintaining a “no job too small” attitude, and an open, inclusive and humble style.
• One Team - Taking a highly collaborative approach to achieving success.
• Lift As We Climb - Investing in developing others and helping others around us succeed.
• Lean & Nimble - Working with agility and efficiency to experiment in an often ambiguous environment.

• A mission- and values-driven culture and a safe, inclusive environment where you can build, grow and thrive  
• A comprehensive total rewards package that supports your wellness and provides security for SimpliSafers and their families (For more information on our total rewards please click here)
• Free SimpliSafe system and professional monitoring for your home. 
• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that bring people together, give opportunities to network, mentor and develop, and advocate for change.

The target annual base pay range for this role is $220,000 to $323,000.

This target annual base pay range represents our good-faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this role. We use a market-based compensation approach to set our target annual base pay ranges and make adjustments annually. We carefully tailor individual compensation packages, including base pay, taking into consideration employees’ job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and other relevant business factors. 

Beyond base pay, we offer a Total Rewards package that may include participation in our annual bonus program, equity, and other forms of compensation, in addition to a full range of medical, retirement, and lifestyle benefits. More details can be found here.

We’re committed to fair and equitable pay practices, as well as pay transparency. We regularly review our programs to ensure they remain competitive and aligned with our values.

We wholeheartedly embrace and actively seek applications from all individuals, no matter how they identify. We are committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace, and we believe our work is enriched when we incorporate a multitude of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. We want everyone who works here to thrive and contribute to not only our mission of keeping every home secure, but also to making our workplace safe and supportive for others. If a reasonable accommodation may be needed to fully participate in the job application or interview process, to perform the essential functions of a position, or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact [email protected].