Senior Director, Data Engineering

Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

Visa Inc. is at the forefront of the GenAI revolution, aiming to establish itself as the world's leading data-driven payments company. We are seeking a hands-on Senior Director of Data Engineering, Data Science, and GenAI/ML. This role is crucial to the development and management of our Loyalty and Marketing platforms while leveraging advanced AI/ML technologies. You will be part of the Value Added Services – Digital Marketing & Engagement organization and will provide technical leadership/oversight to software architects and engineers, while partnering with your product partners on large and complex projects for Customer Engagement, Loyalty, and Marketing domains.

Responsibilities:

Leadership & Management:

• Hire, retain, and grow high-performing, diverse engineering and data science teams.

• Invest in the career development of employees with a strong focus on mentorship and training.

• Lead with a client-focused mindset across organizations.

• Mentor and motivate high-performing teams of engineers, data scientists, and architects to achieve critical business goals and KPIs.

Technical Leadership:

• Provide technical leadership/oversight to software architects, engineers, and data scientists.

• Drive the architecture for key cross-team/cross-product development projects.

• Establish software development and data science best practices via examples and shipping code.

• Ensure engineering and data science excellence (quality, security, performance, scalability, availability, resilience).

Collaboration & Strategy:

• Collaborate with Product Office, Operations & Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Client Support, and other Product Development teams to develop complete solutions.

• Drive the coordination, organization, and execution of qualitative and quantitative decisions.

• Guide the delivery of strategic projects aligned with business strategy on innovative payment acceptance and integrated commerce management.

• Collaborate closely with the global product teams in marketing and loyalty to define strategy and communicate a clear vision for the team.

Development & Innovation:

• Deliver products with complex technical interdependencies by collaborating with geographically dispersed teams.

• Develop architectures that are inherently secure, robust, scalable, modular, API-centric, and global.

• Optimize the use of Visa’s Platforms & Solutions.

• Make a positive impact on Visa's Loyalty and Marketing team, fostering innovation and exploring new technologies such as Gen AI/ML.

Engineering & Data Science Excellence:

• Drive down technical debt and manage costs within product and organization budgets.

• Establish best practices in client application development and data science using engineering excellence.

• Apply architecture and data science best practices that help increase execution velocity.

• Handle routine activities such as coordination, coaching, mentoring, recruiting, budgeting, planning, delivery, quality, partner relationships, performance metrics, operations, efficiency, and service level management.

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
15+ years of relevant work experience with at least 6 years in leading engineering and data science teams.
Proven experience managing software development and data science teams for enterprise-level, distributed applications using technologies such as Java, Microservices, Hadoop, Spark, and AI/ML frameworks.

Preferred Qualifications:
Deep technical experience in Java/J2EE, Microservices, Big Data Hadoop ecosystems, AI/ML frameworks, and open systems.
Technical experience with Big Data Technologies, focusing on Spark with Java or Scala.
Expertise with AI/ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc.), Java/J2EE, Spring, Spring Boot, caching, streaming pipelines.
Experience in deploying and managing software and AI/ML models in public Cloud technologies.
Familiarity with Agile methodologies and software development lifecycle principles.
Experience in API Development using SOAP or REST, JSON, and XML.
Experience with GIT/Stash, Maven, and Jenkins.
Strong interpersonal, facilitation, and effective communication skills.
Proven ability to lead and navigate through ambiguity.
Payment industry experience is a plus.
Hands-on experience writing clean, coherent code and developing AI/ML models following established guidelines.

Additional Skills:
Strong experience in continuous delivery and DevOps, including infrastructure automation, monitoring, logging, and security implementation.
Proven knowledge of successful design, architecture, and development of complex systems.
Advanced understanding of AI/ML model development and deployment.
Ability to solve complex software development/design issues.
Demonstrated ability to deliver on multiple projects and manage priorities based on changing directions.

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.