Hiring: Head of Data Engineering, Corporate & Enterprise Company: Guardian Life Location: Holmdel, NJ Job Posted Time: 2026-09-10 07:43:24 Employment Type: Full-time Target Skills & Keywords : Agile, Airflow, CI/CD, Databricks, ELT, ETL, Fivetran, Kafka, LLM, Machine Learning, Regulatory Compliance, Spark, dbt About the job Experience: •12+ years of progressive data engineering experience, including 5+ years leading data engineering teams and delivery at scale in a large enterprise and have experience in Finance, actuaries, HR related data and workflows. Required Skills: •Own end-to-end data engineering for the Corporate business units and Enterprise - source data acquisition, ingestion, integration, transformation, curation, and publication of production-ready data products for AI, ML, reporting, analytics, and application consumption •Define and execute the data engineering strategy and multi-year roadmap, aligned to business unit priorities and Guardian's enterprise data and AI strategy •Lead, coach, and develop a team of FTE data engineers; provide direction, standards, and delivery oversight to an indirect engineering team in India, operating a seamless follow-the-sun global delivery model •Operate as a player-coach, remain hands-on as needed with solution design, code and pipeline reviews, complex troubleshooting, and critical delivery moments •Own and manage the MDM platform and operations on Reltio, including data modeling, match/merge rules, survivorship, workflows, integrations, and API-based consumption •Mature the MDM practice into an enterprise-grade discipline, improve golden record quality, expand mastered domains, strengthen data stewardship and governance workflows, and measure and communicate MDM business value •Lead the transformation of data engineering using agentic AI, deploy AI agents for pipeline development, code generation, testing, documentation, data quality monitoring, anomaly detection, and self-healing operations •Champion AI-assisted engineering practices across the team, redefining team workflows, productivity expectations, and engineering roles for an agentic future Qualifications: •Proven experience leading globally distributed teams, including direct FTE leadership and indirect/offshore teams in India, within a matrixed organization •Demonstrated ability to operate as a player-coach - setting strategy and leading people while staying hands-on with architecture, design, and engineering when needed •Deep expertise across the end-to-end data engineering lifecycle: data acquisition, batch and streaming ingestion, ELT/ETL, data modeling, curation, and productionization of data products •Strong hands-on knowledge of the modern data stack including cloud data platforms (e.g., Fivetran, Databricks), orchestration (e.g., Databricks, Airflow), transformation frameworks (e.g., Spark, dbt), streaming (e.g., Kafka), and CI/CD-driven DataOps •A strong software engineering mindset and execution skills, with a proven track record of designing and building reusable tools, libraries, and frameworks, applying sound software design principles, testing, and documentation, and driving their adoption across engineering teams to multiply productivity and impact •Strong Master Data Management expertise with deep, practical knowledge of Reltio - data modeling, match/merge and survivorship configuration, workflows, integrations, and APIs and a track record of maturing an MDM practice •Forward-leaning experience with AI-assisted and agentic engineering using LLMs and AI agents for code generation, testing, data quality, observability, and autonomous operations and a compelling vision for agent-driven data engineering •Strong grounding in data governance, data quality, metadata, lineage, and privacy/security practices, ideally in a regulated industry such as insurance or financial services •A data-as-a-product mindset with experience defining data contracts, SLAs, and consumer-driven design •Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and convey complex technical concepts to business audiences Compensation: •Flexible work environment (work from home / hybrid options) Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don't miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!