At Northwestern Mutual, we are strong, innovative and growing. We invest in our people. We care and make a positive difference.
Data is a critical of this approach and a cornerstone for how Northwestern Mutual engages with its customers. To help lead the effort, the company is seeking a highly strategic, analytical, organized, and motivated Senior Director of Core Data Integration to lead and manage teams that aggregate, transform, and manage enterprise data for both operations and analytics.
You will lead a team of data engineers in the company's Core Data & Analytics (CDA) department and collaborate with engineering teams throughout the organization to help deliver data and drive business applications & analytics. You will oversee the company's data platforms which aggregate the company's data and lead the development of a Master Data Management solution that provides a single, trusted view of our customers.
Your responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Leading teams of data engineers in the design, development, testing, deployment and production operations of data pipelines that aggregate data from throughout the company's systems into enterprise data platforms.
• Plan, develop and deliver a robust Master Data Management solution for customer data.
• Accelerating the ability to ingest and aggregate data from external data sources, consolidate with internal data, and leverage it to meet operational and analytical business needs.
• Leading strategic planning, roadmap development, and operational planning for engineering teams in cooperation with the product and infrastructure organizations.

• Evaluating and making the call on technical solutions and platforms.
• Plans, recruits, hires and on-boards strong talent that includes employee and a contingent workforce
• Develops and drives team standards and best practices across organization
• Provides ongoing direct feedback and performance reviews for team members
• Mentors and guides engineering leaders within their team for job performance as well as technical and leadership growth

Ideal candidate would bring the following:

• Excellent track record of successfully designing and delivering significant and impactful data solutions.
• Experience in end-to-end data engineering solutions
• Extensive understanding of batch and real-time data integration patterns include ETL / ELT experience (Informatica, SSIS, Airflow, Nifi, etc.), data replication, data streaming, virtualization, etc.

• Leveraging agile methods in developing and leading solution delivery.
• Ability to successfully communicate to both technical and non-technical audiences in varying forms and levels of detail both inside and outside of the data organization.
• Demonstrates core values of accountability, grit, impact, integrity and teamwork
• Ability to grow engineering skill sets in others and develop future engineering leaders.
• Proven ability to successfully coach/mentor future engineering leaders.

You will know you are successful if:

• The company's data platforms make step function advancements under your leadership, by achieving major data platform delivery milestones
• The value of data is unlocked through both operational and analytical solutions
• A trusted view of the customer is delivered and available through a master record

• You collaborate with your teams and peers to deliver solutions that successfully combine new platforms and older, existing systems
• Your stakeholders are delighted by the excellence, impact, and delivery-focused mindset of your teams
• You deliver impactful results through your leaders and teams.

Desired Experience:

• 8+ years' experience in Data Engineering, with 4+ years of experience leading teams
• Experience working in a hybrid (on-premises and cloud) infrastructure environment
• Deep experience in public cloud technology; AWS is preferred
• Expertise in cloud database technology (e.g. Aurora) and/or managing enterprise operational and analytical data stores
• Expertise in leading teams that implement both streaming (e.g. Kafka) and batch (e.g. Airflow, AWS Glue, Informatica) data transport technologies

• Experience with Agile/Scrum development methodology
• Superior analytical, evaluative, and problem-solving abilities
• Comfortability with ambiguity and distilling the unknown into direction setting
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to understand and express concepts and recommendations
• Ability to navigate different levels of leadership and articulate ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences

• Strong organizational, time management and prioritization skills
• Ability to perform independently as well as influence and contribute to a team
• Strong self-motivation and the ability to motivate teams through collaboration

This job is not covered by the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Required Certifications:
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We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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