Senior Director of Data Engineering

Change.org is searching for a Senior Director of Data Engineering to join our team, reporting directly to the CTO. In this role, you’ll lead Change.org’s data engineering functions, building the foundation for organizational insight, scale, and reliability. Your work will ensure that our 50+ million monthly users, thousands of campaign creators, and internal teams have trusted, high-quality, and accessible data to drive impact around the world.

We’re a social impact business (a public benefit company), and the world's largest social change platform with 100 million users, 40,000+ campaigns launched on the site every month, and a 100% user-generated revenue model. Our users win campaigns for change once every hour. We’re working for a world where no one is powerless, and where creating change is a part of everyday life. We’re just getting started and hope you’ll join us!

From mobilizing over 5 million people to investigate the fires in the Amazon, to mobilizing nearly 3 million against war and famine in Yemen, to large-scale mobilizations for the people of Iran and against the war in Ukraine, and calling for Racial Justice in the US, many movements were born on Change.org. Dozens of local, national, and international victories are happening every day thanks to the strength of our members who are changing the lives of people around the world. We want to help them go even further and we need your help!

Key Outcomes — Building the Technical Backbone for Data & AI

• Reliable Data Infrastructure – Own the architecture, scalability, and performance of data pipelines, storage, and access patterns.

• Data Quality & Governance – Ensure data contracts, lineage, SLAs, and monitoring are in place so all business and product decisions rest on trustworthy data.

• Enablement at Scale – Provide stable and performant data platforms, tooling, and APIs that empower analysts, product managers, designers, and campaigners with self-serve access.

• ML-Driven Data Platform – Lead a team that applies machine learning and automation to the data platform itself — powering data classification, entity resolution, quality scoring, and metadata enrichment.

• Product Support with AI/ML – Partner closely with product feature teams to embed ML/AI capabilities directly into user‑facing features, ensuring technical feasibility, reliability, and responsible use.

• Cost‑Efficient & Secure Systems – Manage cloud resources with an eye to efficiency, observability, and compliance (GDPR, CCPA, etc.).

• Cross‑Org Alignment – Translate the needs of product, design, marketing, and BI into technical roadmaps that balance short‑term delivery with long‑term scalability.

What You’ll Lead

• A data engineering and ML/AI team responsible for ingestion, transformation, storage, orchestration, and applied AI delivery.

• Platform capabilities including data lake, warehouse, orchestration tools, observability, and ML/AI deployment frameworks.

• Partnerships with the Director of Analytics to turn business requirements into engineering plans and deliver scalable solutions.

• Implementation of data quality frameworks, governance practices, and model monitoring across the organization.

• Leadership of a high‑performance ML/AI engineering team that develops, trains, and deploys models (LLMs, predictive, personalization) in close partnership with product feature teams.

• Vendor and tool evaluation for ETL, data storage, orchestration, and ML/AI platforms.

The most important core competencies for the role are:

• Deep technical expertise in modern data architecture (cloud data warehouses, lakes, streaming, orchestration frameworks).

• Strong understanding of data modeling, APIs, service‑oriented architecture, and ML/AI deployment workflows.

• Proven ability to implement data quality, monitoring, governance, and model observability frameworks.

• Experience partnering with product and design leaders to translate business needs into technical and ML/AI requirements.

• Ability to anticipate scale, performance, and cost trade‑offs, making principled architectural decisions for data and AI systems.

• Strong leadership and people management skills — able to grow, mentor, and inspire diverse teams of data and ML/AI engineers.

Target Experience

• 8–10+ years in data engineering, ML/AI, or related fields, including 4**+ years** in leadership roles.

• Proven experience architecting and scaling data platforms and ML/AI systems in mission‑driven or high‑growth environments.

• Demonstrated success in implementing governance, lineage, observability, and model monitoring frameworks.

• Hands-on experience with multiple cloud environments (AWS/GCP/Azure) and modern data stack tools.

• Strong track record in MLOps: CI/CD for models, containerized deployments, feature stores, model serving, and ongoing monitoring.

• Direct leadership of ML/AI engineering teams delivering applied AI capabilities (LLMs, predictive models, personalization) into production.

• Experience partnering with analytics, product, and design to deliver trusted, impactful data and ML/AI solutions.

Interested? Great! Here's what you should know:

This is a full time, remote role based in North America (USA, CAN, MX)

Our compensation philosophy is based on pay equity. All of our salaries are determined before we launch a role – they are based on a predetermined salary scale, the level on that scale and the cost of labor for that location. The annual salary of a Senior Director of Data Engineering is $327,500 in SF and NYC, $311,000 in Austin, Boston, Chicago, LA, Seattle, Washington D.C., and $278,500 in all other US locations. The annual salary is CA$307,500 in Vancouver & Toronto, CA$280,500 in most other locations in Canada.

Benefits and perks also vary based on location.

Our evaluation process is as follows:

• Recruiter Screen (45 mins) – Recruiting Team

• Hiring Manager Interview (45 mins) – CTO

• Team Interviews (~2 hrs) – Product, Engineering & Technical Operations Leaders

• Executive Conversation (30 mins) – Executive Team Member

• References

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting amazing candidates like you, so please don’t hesitate to apply—we’d love to meet you. We also know it’s rare for someone to meet 100% of the qualifications. Please apply anyway!

We actively encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to apply. At Change.org, we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We invest in programs to support our diverse workforce, offer inclusive onboarding experiences and affinity groups, celebrate the heritage of our staff, provide training on working across differences, and maintain fair and transparent salary scales. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, or culture.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for candidates with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

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We are legally required to conduct EEOC reporting. While this is required by the federal government, we recognize that it does not include all genders and ethnicities. We want you to know that Change.org celebrates all identities and we thank you for your participation.http://change.org/

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While we are a global company, we ask that you please submit your resumes/application questions in English.