Director of Data - Penn Foster

Position Summary:

At Penn Foster Group, our purpose is to open doors to brighter futures by helping learners gain the skills they need to grow their careers. Penn Foster Group is a mission-driven, PE-backed education company focused on helping learners gain the skills needed for long-term career success. As we scale toward 150,000 learner completions, we are investing in a modern data platform to support B2B partnerships, learner outcomes, and operational decision-making. Data is foundational to this transformation. We are seeking a Director of Data to lead and operate our data platform across Data Engineering, Self-Service Analytics, and MLOps. This role is responsible for executing the data strategy, ensuring reliable and scalable data systems, and enabling the business through trusted, governed, and accessible data. This role leads the execution and scaling of the data platform, translating strategic priorities into clear, predictable delivery across engineering teams. The data organization operates as a centralized platform team, delivering domain- aligned data products to the business. This role reports to the Senior Director, Product and Data Engineering and will lead a team of ~12–14 across Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, and MLOps, including three technical leads. The ideal candidate brings strong leadership experience, deep understanding of modern data platforms (Databricks, Azure), and the ability to drive execution through technical leaders and teams. This role will oversee data governance, data quality, observability, and cost optimization to ensure platform reliability, scalability, and business impact.

Essential Job Functions:

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of data engineering leads, data engineers, and BI analysts, driving accountability, clarity, and delivery outcomes.
• Own day-to-day prioritization, execution, and delivery of the data platform within defined strategic priorities
• Translate strategic direction into a clear, executable roadmap and ensure predictable delivery through strong operating cadence.
• Own and deliver data products aligned to business domains (e.g., Enrollments, Calls, Emails), ensuring they are reusable, governed, and trusted.
• Reduce reliance on ad-hoc reporting by scaling self-service data capabilities and enabling business teams to access data independently.
• Lead the execution and evolution of the data platform on Databricks and Azure, including migration away from legacy systems.
• Ensure high standards for data quality, reliability, freshness, and observability across pipelines and datasets.
• Establish and enforce platform-wide standards for data modeling, performance optimization, governance, and operational excellence.
• Define and enforce architectural guardrails across the platform, ensuring consistency, scalability, and alignment across domains.
• Partner with enginee