Senior Director, Data Engineering

Location: Campbell
Posted on: June 23, 2025

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: , Santa Clara , Senior Director, Data Engineering, IT / Software / Systems , Campbell, California