VP, Data Engineering (remote)

Vice President, Data Engineering

At Cengage Group, our employees have a direct impact in helping students around the world discover the power and joy of learning. We are bonded by our shared purpose – driving innovation that helps millions of learners improve their lives and achieve their dreams through education. Our culture values inclusion, engagement, and discovery. We recognize the value of diverse perspectives in everything we do, and strive to ensure employees of all levels and backgrounds feel empowered to voice their ideas and bring their authentic selves to work.

The Vice President of Data Engineering is a senior technology executive accountable for building, operating, and evolving the enterprise data ecosystem. This leader ensures that modern data platforms, pipelines, and architectures are delivered securely, reliably, and cost-efficiently – enabling analytics, governance, and AI/ML across the enterprise. The VP of Data Engineering combines technical fluency with executive leadership, shaping the company's data strategy while driving excellence in engineering execution. The role balances strategic vision, business partnership, and people development to ensure that data becomes a scalable, trusted, and high-value corporate asset.

Key Responsibilities

• Enterprise Data Engineering & Platform Leadership
• Define and deliver the enterprise data engineering strategy, aligned with business priorities and digital transformation initiatives.
• Oversee design, development, and operation of cloud-native data platforms (e.g., Snowflake, AWS/Azure/GCP, streaming and integration technologies).
• Drive engineering excellence in pipelines, APIs, real-time/streaming, master data integration, and metadata management.
• Ensure platforms are optimized for performance, security, scalability, and cost efficiency, with best-in-class FinOps practices.

• Governance, Quality & Enablement
• Partner with governance and stewardship functions to ensure platforms enforce data quality, lineage, and compliance.
• Provide the infrastructure, tools, and frameworks that enable analytics, business intelligence, and AI/ML development.
• Collaborate with business and IT leaders to identify high-impact data opportunities and accelerate time-to-value.

• Business Partnership & Value Realization
• Serve as a trusted partner to business executives, ensuring data engineering investments translate into measurable outcomes: efficiency, growth, risk reduction, and innovation.
• Communicate platform value and performance at the executive and board levels, linking engineering delivery to enterprise strategy.
• Champion adoption of enterprise data platforms across R&D, commercial, HR, finance, and customer-facing teams.

• Leadership & Talent Development
• Lead and inspire a global team of data engineers, architects, and platform specialists, encouraging a culture of accountability, collaboration, and innovation.
• Establish career pathways, competencies, and training programs that elevate engineering capability and data stewardship maturity.
• Act as an executive sponsor for talent development, succession planning, and diversity in technology leadership.

Cengage Group is committed to working with broad talent pools to attract and hire strong and most qualified individuals. Our job applicants are considered regardless of race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, disability, age, veteran status, and any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, provincial or local laws. Cengage is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities including during our job application process.

Cengage Group, a global education technology company serving millions of learners, provides affordable, quality digital products and services that equip students with the skills and competencies needed to be job ready. For more than 100 years, we have enabled the power and joy of learning with trusted, engaging content, and now, integrated digital platforms. We serve the higher education, workforce skills, secondary education, English language teaching and research markets worldwide. Through our scalable technology, including MindTap and Cengage Unlimited, we support all learners who seek to improve their lives and achieve their dreams through education.

Be aware, there has been an increase of targeted recruitment scams perpetrated by bad actors falsely providing job offers on behalf Cengage Group to candidates as a means of obtaining personal information. Note that Cengage will always interview candidates via live in-person meetings, phone calls and video calls before an offer would be extended. Also, be sure to check that communication is coming from an @cengage.com email address.