Job Title: VP of Data and AI

Location: Remote

Salary: $220,000-$260,000

Skills: Data Engineering, Snowflake, SQL Server Ingestion, Data Governance, Business Intelligence

About the Financial Services Company / The Opportunity:

Join a technology-enabled leader in the Financial Services sector dedicated to providing flexible financing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. This is a unique opportunity for a dynamic VP of Data and AI to define the roadmap for a state-of-the-art data ecosystem in a rapidly growing, innovative environment. You will play a pivotal role in shaping data infrastructure and AI capabilities, driving business impact and technological excellence on a national scale—all within a fully remote work model.

Responsibilities:

* Define and drive the long-term roadmap for data ingestion, modeling, governance, observability, and business intelligence.

* Own and evolve a Debezium-based Change Data Capture (CDC) infrastructure for reliability, scalability, and robust schema-change management.

* Oversee ingestion processes from SQL Server and cloud storage; expand coverage to new data sources and third-party integrations.

* Build and lead high-performing teams across Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, and Data Science/ML Engineering domains.

* Collaborate with Risk partners to deliver reproducible, training-ready datasets, feature sets, and monitoring tables.

* Architect foundational data structures to support machine learning and AI workloads—including pipelines, vector layers, and model governance.

* Establish and enforce comprehensive data governance frameworks covering semantic consistency, data contracts, PII handling, lineage, and access controls.

* Optimize performance and cost for Snowflake, transformation workflows, and BI reporting layers.

* Set technical standards, mentor team members, and foster a culture of high-quality, maintainable data work.

Must-Have Skills:

* 10+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, ML infrastructure, or related fields, including 3–5+ years in a leadership role.

* Demonstrated expertise in scaling Snowflake and DBT solutions in production environments.

* Strong background with SQL Server ingestion patterns, cloud-storage pipelines, and SaaS data integrations.

* Proven ability to establish data governance, including semantic consistency, PII handling, and access controls.

* Experience building, leading, and mentoring multidisciplinary data teams.

Nice-to-Have Skills:

* Hands-on experience with Debezium-based CDC and schema-change management.

* Knowledge of BI layer design, reliable metrics modeling, and governance best practices.

* Expertise in architecting data foundations for enterprise-scale ML and AI workloads.

* Familiarity with financial services data, risk analytics, and compliance requirements.

* Industry certifications in data engineering, cloud, or AI/ML technologies.