The Position:The Director of Data Engineering will lead the design, development, and evolution of our enterprise data platforms to empower scientific, clinical, operational, and commercial teams with trusted, actionable data. This role will oversee the architecture and engineering of modern data lake and lake house environments on AWS, ensuring scalable, secure, reliable, and efficient data solutions that support Veracyte's mission. You will partner cross-functionally to shape the future of our data ecosystem while developing and mentoring a high-performing engineering team.
This position is based out of our San Diego office (hybrid).Responsibilities
- Lead the strategy, roadmap, and execution for data engineering across cloud-native data lake and lake house architectures on AWS
- Oversee ingestion, transformation, quality, governance, and orchestration pipelines supporting analytics, ML, bioinformatics, and operational workloads
- Drive architectural decisions for scalable, high-availability systems using AWS services such as S3, Glue, Athena, Lambda, and related technologies like Snowflake.
- Establish and enforce data engineering best practices, including CI/CD, testing frameworks, observability, lineage, and documentation
- Partner with data science, analytics, product, clinical, and software engineering teams to deliver reliable, well-modeled data products
- Ensure platform security, compliance, and data privacy through policies, tooling, and close collaboration with Security and IT
- Manage, grow, and mentor a team of data engineers and architects, fostering an inclusive, collaborative culture aligned with our values
- Evaluate emerging technologies and guide modernization initiatives to improve scalability, cost efficiency, and performance
- Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business and scientific needs into scalable and maintainable data solutions
- Own operational excellence for all production data pipelines, including monitoring, incident response, and SLA management
Who You Are:Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in data engineering or related fields, including 5+ years building large-scale data architectures
- Demonstrated expertise designing and operating data lake and lake house architectures on AWS
- Hands-on experience with modern ETL/ELT frameworks, distributed data processing, and orchestration tools
- Strong proficiency with SQL, Python, and data modeling for analytical and operational workloads
- Experience leading and mentoring engineering teams, including hiring, performance management, and career development
- Deep understanding of data governance, data quality, security, and privacy controls
- Proven ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional partners in a fast-paced environment
- Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into understandable terms
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in biotech, life sciences, diagnostics, or other regulated data environments
- Background working with scientific, clinical, or laboratory data pipelines
- Familiarity with ML/AI workflows and supporting MLOps platforms
- Experience with cost optimization strategies for large-scale AWS data systems
- Expertise in designing reusable data products or domain-oriented architectures
- Knowledge of metadata management, lineage tooling, and data catalog platforms
#LI-Hybrid
The final salary offered to a successful candidate will be dependent on several factors that may include but are not limited to years of experience, skillset, geographic location, industry, education, etc. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Pay range
$234,000-$253,000 USD
What We Can Offer YouVeracyte is a growing company that offers significant career opportunities if you are curious, driven, patient-oriented and aspire to help us build a great company. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, and are committed to fostering an inclusive workforce, where diverse backgrounds are represented, engaged, and empowered to drive innovative ideas and decisions. We are thrilled to be recognized as a 2024 Certified™ Great Place to Work® in both the US and Israel - a testament to our dynamic, inclusive, and inspiring workplace where passion meets purpose.
