Director of Engineering - Data Lakes

From Fivetran’s founding until now, our mission has remained the same: to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity. With Fivetran, customer data arrives in their warehouses, canonical and ready to query, with no engineering or maintenance required. We’re proud that more organizations continue to leverage our technology every day to become truly data-driven.

About the Role

Fivetran is building data pipelines to power the modern data stack for thousands of companies.

We’re seeking a Director of Engineering to lead and guide the technical architecture, design, and development of Fivetran’s Managed Data Lake product offering. You will lead a purpose built and elite team of senior engineers dedicated to this task. You will partner with product and across our engineering organization to build scalable, high-performance systems, advance open-source technologies, and set technical standards that raise our bar. You will provide strategic direction and ensure alignment across teams while empowering your team as we deliver the next evolution of our Data Lake product at scale.

This full-time remote position is available in Germany.

Technologies You’ll Use

• Java, C++, Postgres, Temporal, gRPC

• AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, Grafana

• Iceberg, Polaris, Delta Lake, Parquet, DuckDB

• You are a deeply technical leader who thrives on solving complex engineering problems. You will play a hands-on role in interviewing, hiring, conducting deep design and architecture reviews, and providing technical guidance to elevate our engineering standards.

• Lead and develop a team of highly experienced engineers, fostering an environment of collaboration, technical excellence, and innovation.

• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to align our technical direction with business strategy and customer needs to culminate in a long term strategy for our managed Data Lake offering.

• Define quarterly goals and OKRs for Data Lakes while driving the planning process to ensure strategic alignment and effective delivery.

• You will own the strategy, roadmap, and execution plan for Data Lakes, driving end-to-end delivery in close partnership with cross-functional teams.

• Drive clarity on priorities, resource allocation, and execution across complex, large-scale initiatives.

• Ensure operational excellence of our Data Lake services, meeting commitments for security, reliability, availability, and performance.

• Represent the Data Lake organization in cross-functional forums, influencing product strategy, infrastructure investments, and open-source engagement.

• Embrace Fivetran innovations with open-source standards and toolsets.

• Build and sustain a culture of accountability, inclusivity, and continuous improvement.

• Manage headcount planning, travel expenses, and other budgetary items related to the team.

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years in engineering leadership roles.

• Demonstrated success leading highly experienced engineers on large-scale distributed systems.

• Strong background in data management, storage systems, or high-performance computing.

• Deep understanding of infrastructure & software optimizations and performance engineering to drive significant performance, latency, and availability improvements.

• Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on technical guidance when needed.

• Proven record of delivering mission-critical software in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).

• Excellent cross-functional leadership skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders at all levels.

• Strong development skills in Java and C++.

• Solid experience with public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP).

• Growth mindset and excitement about breaking the status quo by seeking innovative solutions.

• 5+ years of hands-on or research experience with high-performance relational data management systems.

Bonus Skills

• Strongly prefer an MS or PhD in Computer Science, ideally focusing on database management and/or storage engines.

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