Senior Director, Data Engineering
Location: Schiller Park
Posted on: June 23, 2025
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Job Description:
Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s largest work marketplace,
connecting businesses with highly skilled professionals worldwide.
From entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 enterprises, companies trust
Upwork’s platform to access expert talent, leverage AI-powered work
solutions, and drive meaningful business outcomes. Upwork’s
AI-powered platform has facilitated over $20 billion in economic
opportunity for professionals worldwide. With professionals
spanning 10,000 skills, including AI and machine learning, software
development, sales and marketing, customer support, finance and
accounting, and more, Upwork empowers businesses of all sizes to
scale, innovate, and build agile teams. We’re seeking a strategic
and visionary Senior Director of Data Engineering to lead the
development and evolution of Upwork’s Data Platform team. In this
critical leadership role, you’ll be at the forefront of shaping
scalable data infrastructure and driving data strategy across the
organization. You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with Marketing,
Finance, Engineering, AI/ML, and Data Science teams, ensuring our
platform delivers high-quality data to power decision-making and
innovation. Join us in revolutionizing how data is leveraged across
Upwork and making a meaningful impact on our platform and users.
Responsibilities • Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing data
engineering team, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation,
and accountability • Define the vision, strategy, and execution
roadmap for Upwork’s Data Platform to support the company’s growth
and analytics needs • Build and scale reliable, efficient data
infrastructure and data processing pipelines that support real-time
and batch data workflows • Collaborate with cross-functional
partners in marketing, finance, engineering, and data science to
ensure alignment on data priorities and outcomes • Oversee data
governance, quality, and best practices to ensure the availability
of accurate, actionable insights • Drive technical excellence while
balancing trade-offs between short-term delivery and long-term
platform scalability • Foster strong communication and coordination
across a globally distributed team What it takes to catch our eye •
Proven experience leading and scaling data engineering or platform
engineering teams in high-growth environments • Experience with key
components of modern data ecosystems, including orchestration tools
(e.g., DBT, Apache Airflow), scalable data processing (e.g., Apache
Spark), and cloud-native data architectures (e.g., AWS, GCP, or
Azure) • Strong technical foundation in building and optimizing
ETL/ELT pipelines, working with both SQL and NoSQL databases, and
implementing data observability, monitoring, and query performance
tuning • Familiarity with enterprise-grade data platforms and
storage solutions, including data lake and warehouse technologies
such as Snowflake • Understanding of machine learning architecture
integration within data platforms, supporting experimentation and
model deployment workflows • Strong track record of
cross-functional collaboration, particularly with marketing,
finance, engineering, and data science • Experience managing teams
distributed across time zones, with a focus on inclusive and
effective remote-first practices • Ability to define a long-term
vision for data architecture while ensuring day-to-day operational
excellence
Keywords: , Rockford , Senior Director, Data Engineering, IT / Software / Systems , Schiller Park, Illinois
