We are seeking an experienced, strategic, and visionary Senior Engineering Manager - Data to lead the long-term evolution, governance, and operations of Workiva’s multi-tenant data platform sub-function. This platform serves as the foundational bedrock underpinning our enterprise and customer-facing applications, operating at a global scale under the highest standards of security, compliance, and reliability.
In this role, you will navigate highly ambiguous environments to shape the future of Workiva’s data ecosystem. You will directly and indirectly lead a world-class, multi-team data engineering organization distributed across Europe and the US, including the direct management of engineering managers and senior individual contributors. You will own the strategic objectives and operational policies of this sub-function, ensuring our platform empowers application teams, supports enterprise integration, and delivers measurable value to global customers while informing decision-making at the Director and Senior Director levels.
What You’ll Do
Strategic Leadership & Sub-Function Governance
- Develop, communicate, and execute the long-term strategic objectives for Workiva’s multi-tenant data platform sub-function, ensuring alignment with enterprise-wide objectives
- Partner closely with senior functional managers and establish exposure with Operational Leaders to align the platform with corporate compliance, security, and governance standards
- Exercise independent judgment to establish sub-function policies and practices that drive long-term engineering success and reduce system friction
- Formulate and deliver persuasive, data-backed recommendations to influence and inform decision-making at the Director and Senior Director levels
- Maintain a deep awareness of global nuances across your distributed US and European teams, adapting your messaging and leadership style to drive consistent execution
Platform Evolution & Mitigating Enterprise Risk
- Own the architectural direction, scaling, and continuous improvement of the platform’s ingestion, transformation, and serving layers across highly ambiguous technical landscapes
- Tackle complex, high-impact problems where data analysis requires evaluating intangible factors and balancing short- and long-term business trade-offs
- Accountable for sub-functional operational excellence, including cost transparency mechanisms, observability, and infrastructure optimizations that prevent critical operational delays
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- Anticipate future enterprise scaling vectors to drive platform capabilities supporting advanced analytics, AI/ML pipelines, and external-facing data products
Multi-Team Building & Leadership Modeling
- Directly and indirectly manage a high-performing, distributed sub-function comprising multiple engineering squads, providing strong leadership examples for the broader organization
- Assume full people management responsibility for your sub-function, including workforce planning, hiring, talent retention, annual performance evaluations, and compensation reviews
- Focus on leadership development by actively mentoring, coaching, and supervising entry-level engineering managers and senior technical leaders
- Foster an inclusive culture of accountability and high ownership where distributed engineering teams are empowered to solve systemic data problems
Execution & High-Impact Delivery
- Translate high-level enterprise strategy into actionable multi-team roadmaps, ensuring your direct-report managers are aligned on milestone delivery
- Ensure the continuous improvement of self-service capabilities that allow application teams to innovate rapidly and securely without bottlenecking on core data infrastructure
- Set and track rigorous sub-functional KPIs around platform adoption, resilience, system availability, and customer outcomes
What You’ll Need
Minimum Qualifications
- Education: Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of related engineering experience, OR Master’s degree with 6+ years, OR PhD with 4+ years of related experience
- Management Experience: 3+ years of direct people management experience, specifically including the supervisory experience of entry-level engineering managers and/or leading multiple concurrent engineering squads
- Scope: Demonstrated experience owning an engineering sub-function or multi-team domain in a high-growth, production-grade environment
Preferred Qualifications
- Proven track record of scaling distributed global engineering teams (US and EMEA), managing the complexities of varying time zones and cultural nuances
- Deep technical expertise in modern data platform components: ingestion frameworks (e.g., DLT, Kafka), transformation tools (e.g., dbt), and enterprise serving layers (e.g., Snowflake)
- Strong capability to navigate high ambiguity and make metrics-driven decisions when faced with intangible or conflicting business factors
- Exceptional persuasive communication and stakeholder management skills, with a track record of successfully influencing Director-level business and technical leaders
- Full lifecycle people management experience, including handling performance corrections, organizational design, and compensation planning
Travel Requirements & Working Conditions
- 25% travel for global team jams and internal leadership meetings
- Reliable internet access for remote work deployment
How You’ll Be Rewarded
✅ Salary range in the US: $151,000.00 - $242,000.00 ✅ A discretionary bonus typically paid annually
✅ Restricted Stock Units granted at time of hire
✅ 401(k) match and comprehensive employee benefits package
The salary range represents the low and high end of the salary range for this job in the US. Minimums and maximums may vary based on location. The actual salary offer will carefully consider a wide range of factors, including your skills, qualifications, experience and other relevant factors.
Why Join Workiva
Workiva is the platform designed to bring confidence, control, and a competitive edge to the world’s most complex organizations. Our AI-powered platform unifies finance, risk, and sustainability on a single, secure foundation—ensuring data is trusted, traceable, and ready to act on. With an unbroken path from source to output, leaders gain confidence in their numbers, visibility into current and emerging risks, and the ability to move with speed and precision in a constantly changing world.
At Workiva, you’ll bring technology to market that executives, boards, and regulators depend on. The work you do here helps organizations navigate uncertainty, maintain trust, and make decisions that stand up to scrutiny. If you’re energized by meaningful challenges, inspired by collaborative teams, and motivated to help organizations turn uncertainty into advantage, we’d love to meet you.
Employment decisions are made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status or any other protected characteristic.
Workiva is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. To request assistance with the application process, please email talentacquisition@workiva.com.
Workiva employees are required to undergo comprehensive security and privacy training tailored to their roles, ensuring adherence to company policies and regulatory standards.
Workiva supports employees in working where they work best - either from an office or remotely from any location within their country of employment.
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