Merit Group - Head - Data Engineering

Description:

Location: Pan India - Remote / Hybrid

Experience: 14+ Years (5+ Years in Leadership)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Job Overview

We are seeking an accomplished Head of Data Engineering to lead and scale our data engineering function. This role combines deep technical expertise with strong leadership, strategic thinking, and stakeholder collaboration. You will be responsible for defining the data architecture vision, building scalable and high-performance data platforms, and mentoring teams to deliver enterprise-grade data solutions that power analytics, AI, and business intelligence at scale.

Key Responsibilities

- Lead and elevate data engineering teams by establishing best practices, frameworks, and engineering standards.

- Define architectural vision and select appropriate technology stacks aligned with business and scalability goals.

- Collaborate with product, analytics, data science, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable data solutions.

- Architect, build, and maintain secure, scalable, and high-performance data platforms and distributed systems.

- Drive end-to-end delivery of data engineering solutions ensuring quality, compliance, and timely execution.

- Lead initiatives around Data Discovery, Data Lineage, Data Quality, and Metadata Management.

- Mentor and coach junior and senior data engineers to support career growth.

- Communicate technical concepts, risks, and project status clearly to business and technical stakeholders.

- Build and optimize data pipelines, ETL/ELT workflows, and analytical tools.

- Conduct complex data analysis and present actionable insights to leadership.

Required Skills & Qualifications

- 12+ years of experience in data engineering with 5+ years in leadership roles.

- Strong experience with data lakes, data warehouses, and distributed data systems.

- Proficiency in SQL, Python, Scala, or similar languages.

- Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

- Expertise in Spark, Kafka, Databricks, Snowflake, Airflow, or similar tools.

- Strong understanding of data modeling, governance, security, and metadata management.

- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience supporting ML/AI and advanced analytics platforms.

- Knowledge of data privacy and compliance regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

- Experience with CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code for data platforms.