Posted almost 5 years ago

Job DescriptionAbout Toptal

Toptal is a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $100+ million in annual revenue and triple-digit growth, Toptal is the largest fully distributed workforce in the world.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun (see this video from The Huffington Post). We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

Position Description

As the Data Engineering Manager you will lead and develop a comprehensive data strategy to align our data technology offering to Toptal’s strategic business initiatives.

This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere. All communication and resumes must be submitted in English.

Responsibilities:

In this role, you will own the development and ongoing leadership of an exceptional data engineering and data science function supporting the entire Toptal business. Initial responsibilities will include establishing a proactive and data-driven team that is focused on the delivery of accurate data and information. You will be tasked with ensuring that the technical requirements to support the business analytics function is in alignment with our overall technical vision and roadmap. You will establish data governance best practices that align with the overall analytics vision.

You will provide strong leadership and direction of a team tasked with development and execution of a comprehensive Data Engineering strategy, while providing timely and robust insights for decision-making that drives critical business decisions supporting Toptal’s aggressive growth plans.

You will work in an entirely distributed company and help define an entirely new space while learning about how an organization is built from the ground up.

In the first week you will:

• Onboard and integrate into Toptal.
• Rapidly begin learning about Toptal’s history, culture, and vision.
• Shadow key teams across the company to learn the core of Toptal’s operations and capabilities.

In the first month you will:

• Complete a current state assessment.
• Define processes that govern the intake and prioritization of business requests, estimating, and ensure accurate and timely completion of work in progress.
• Catalog and communicate what is available to the business in current state.
• Stabilize ETL flows.
• Validate that the data store is well architected, makes sense from a business use perspective, and make recommendations for improvement.
• Evaluate current ad-hoc reporting capabilities and recommend future state to ensure agile response.

In the first three months you will:

• Partner with stakeholders to define the purpose and long term vision of the role that the Data Engineering Team serves in Toptal.
• Recommend, gain agreement, and restructure the Data Engineering Teams to ensure efficient execution.
• Clearly define what blend of data vision and exploration versus serving the functional needs is appropriate.
• Provide leadership and direction to the Data Engineering Team to overhaul existing technologies with a goal to have a scalable, robust ETL layer and a near-real time data store that supports both the business and KPI reporting.
• Dig into the data to validate designs, performance, data granularity, data recency, and more. You will not just make high-level recommendations.
• Outline a high-performing and reliable data systems architecture.
• Create OKRs for the Data Engineering Team that align with Company-wide function attributes / Key Results.

In the first six months you will:

• Develop advanced analytic capabilities by providing a vision for how data science and machine learning capabilities can propel our business forward.
• Rapidly gain an understanding of the business requirements and design roadmaps that respond to Toptal’s short and long-term strategic direction.
• Provide role clarity to the existing team and determine and close gaps which will drive future hiring decisions.
• Hire and retain the best team that can propel the Data Engineering vision forward.
• Define and Implement a Data Governance Framework that covers Data Security, Integrity and DRP/BCP.

In the first year you will:

• Grow the Data Engineering Team to support the aggressive growth trajectory that Toptal has planned.

Requirements:

• Proven capability in building and managing a data organization supporting multiple teams.
• Self-starter who is able to be hands on and can analyze, interpret and derive insights into business reports, analytic models, and data sources.
• Ability to learn business processes at a near native level to understand the role that analytics plays in supporting the business.
• Ability to interpret business requirements into data structures, lineage(business purpose), and metadata required.
• Working knowledge of master data management.
• Demonstrated experience with modern data technologies including, columnar data structures, unstructured data, NoSql, machine learning, and cognitive.
• Knowledge of foundational BI concepts such as 3NF, denormalization, OLAP, and slowly changing dimensions.
• Exposure to scala, python, pandas, and familiarity with open source BI tools.
• Experience working with Agile Project Management methodologies.
• Experience coaching and growing individuals in analytics, data affluency, and reporting.
• Ability to negotiate competing priorities in the business.
• Exceptional communication skills.
• Ability to build relationships at an executive level.
• You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.