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Data Practice Director

Caylent

Remote · USA, US$190k – $250kSaaS

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About this role

Caylent is a cloud native services company that helps organizations bring the best out of their people and technology using Amazon Web Services (AWS). We provide a full-range of AWS services including workload migrations and modernization, cloud native application development, DevOps, data engineering, security and compliance, and everything in between.

At Caylent, our people always come first. We are a global company and operate fully remote with employees in Canada, the United States, and Latin America. We celebrate the culture of each of our team members and foster a community of technological curiosity. Come talk to us to learn more about what it means to be a Caylien!

The Role

The Data Practice Director is a senior leadership role within Caylent's Cloud Data Engineering (CDE) practice, reporting directly to the Data Practice Leader. This person is responsible for operationalizing the practice strategy, leading a team of data professionals, and owning delivery excellence across a portfolio of client engagements. They are the connective tissue between strategic direction and day-to-day execution, ensuring the practice delivers consistent, high-quality outcomes while scaling to meet growth targets.

Your Assignment

Practice Operations and Delivery

• Own end-to-end delivery oversight for a portfolio of data engineering and analytics engagements, ensuring on-time, on-budget, and high-quality outcomes.

• Drive operational rigor across the practice including utilization management, staffing coordination, margin tracking, and engagement health reviews.

• Develop and enforce delivery standards, reusable frameworks, and best practices that enable consistent, scalable execution across the team.

• Serve as an escalation point for active engagements, helping resolve technical blockers, scope issues, and client concerns in partnership with delivery leads.

• Partner with the Practice Leader to translate the strategic roadmap into executable quarterly priorities and team-level OKRs.

Team Leadership and Development

• Directly lead and develop a team of data engineers, architects, and analytics professionals across the practice.

• Set clear performance expectations, conduct regular reviews, and provide ongoing coaching to build a high-performing, engaged team.

• Partner with recruiting and workforce planning to identify talent gaps, support hiring decisions, and onboard new team members effectively.

• Foster a culture of ownership, continuous learning, and technical excellence across a globally distributed team.

• Identify and develop emerging leaders within the practice, creating growth pathways aligned to practice needs.

Client Engagement

• Build trusted advisor relationships with key client stakeholders, acting as a senior point of contact for delivery and strategic guidance.

• Partner with the sales and GTM teams to support business development activities including scoping, proposal development, and technical solutioning for new and existing accounts.

• Identify and pursue expansion opportunities within active client engagements, surfacing new use cases and service offerings that align with client needs.

• Represent Caylent with credibility and professionalism in client-facing conversations at the director and VP level.

Practice Growth and Enablement

• Collaborate with the Practice Leader on go-to-market positioning, service offering development, and internal capability building.

• Contribute to thought leadership content including whitepapers, webinars, and conference presentations that elevate the practice's external profile.

• Stay current on trends in the modern data ecosystem and work with the team to incorporate relevant innovations into our delivery approach.

• Support the development of practice IP including accelerators, reference architectures, and reusable solution components.

Your Qualifications

Experience

• 12+ years of experience in professional services or consulting, with a strong focus on data engineering, analytics, or data platform delivery.

• Demonstrated success managing and growing a team of 20 or more data professionals in a services or consulting environment.

• Proven track record of delivering complex data projects on AWS, including data lake, lakehouse, streaming, and analytics workloads.

• Experience managing a portfolio of concurrent client engagements, balancing delivery quality with financial performance.

• Hands-on background in data architecture or engineering, with the ability to engage credibly with technical teams and client stakeholders alike.

Leadership

• Strong people management skills with demonstrated ability to develop talent, drive performance, and build team culture across geographies.

• Ability to operate effectively at multiple levels, from strategic planning conversations with the Practice Leader to hands-on engagement support with delivery teams.

• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and complexity in a fast-paced, high-growth consulting environment.

• Experience influencing senior client stakeholders (director, VP and C-level) in delivery and advisory contexts.

Technical Acumen

• Deep familiarity with the AWS data ecosystem including services such as Redshift, Glue, EMR, Kinesis, Lake Formation, and Athena.

• Working knowledge of adjacent platforms including Databricks and Snowflake, and their integration with AWS-native architectures.

• Broad understanding of data engineering fundamentals: ingestion patterns, transformation frameworks (e.g., Spark, dbt), data modeling, governance, and quality management.

• Familiarity with MLOps and data science workflows sufficient to support and position those capabilities in client conversations.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or a related field.

• Master's degree or MBA is a plus.

Certifications

• AWS Certified Data Analytics, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, or equivalent certifications are a plus.

Preferred Q

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