Director, Data Engineering

Director, Data Engineering

Paysafe is a global payments platform powering the experience economy, with a strong focus on the iGaming, video gaming, e-commerce, retail, travel and hospitality sectors. With 30 years of expertise in payment technology, Paysafe helps businesses and consumers lift every experience through seamless, secure payment solutions, including card payments, digital wallets such as Skrill, eCash solutions like PaysafeCard, and a suite of local payment methods. With approximately 2,900 employees across 12 countries and annualized transactional volume of $167 billion in 2025, Paysafe connects people and businesses worldwide through innovative digital payment experiences. Paysafe is seeking an accomplished and strategic Director of Data Engineering to lead and advance our enterprise data platform capabilities based in Sofia. Reporting to the VP, Data Engineering and Reporting, this senior leadership role is responsible for defining and executing the vision, strategy, and operating model for data engineering across the organization. The role will drive the architecture, scalability, resilience, governance, and modernization of the enterprise data ecosystem while building a high-performing team. This position plays a critical role in enabling advanced analytics, real-time insights, and data-driven decision-making at scale, while aligning business priorities with modern cloud and data platform investments including Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, and Azure.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy & Leadership
• Define and lead the enterprise data engineering strategy and multi-year roadmap aligned with business priorities and regulatory requirements.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing data engineering organization, fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with senior business and technology stakeholders to translate enterprise goals into actionable data platform initiatives.
• Act as a senior escalation point for platform risks, delivery challenges, and strategic decisions.

• Platform Architecture & Engineering
• Provide executive leadership for the design and modernization of scalable, secure, and resilient data platforms across cloud and hybrid environments.
• Establish architectural standards and engineering principles for data ingestion, transformation, storage, orchestration, and consumption.
• Oversee the design and optimization of data pipelines, data lakes, and analytical data products to ensure performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Drive adoption of modern data processing frameworks including Snowflake, Databricks, Snowpipe, Snowpark, and ELT/ETL patterns.

• Data Governance & Quality
• Define and implement enterprise data governance, security, privacy, and compliance frameworks.
• Lead initiatives to improve data quality, consistency, and trust across master, reference, and transactional data.
• Partner with architecture, security, and risk teams to ensure regulatory alignment and data integrity.

• Integration & Modernization
• Lead real-time and batch data integration capabilities, including streaming and event-driven architectures.
• Oversee integration technologies such as Oracle Goldengate and Oracle Data Integrator (ODI).
• Drive platform modernization through automation, standardization, CI/CD, DevOps, and infrastructure-as-code.

• Operations & Delivery Excellence
• Establish KPIs, SLAs, and operational metrics to ensure platform performance and continuous improvement.
• Manage budgets, capacity planning, and vendor relationships.
• Drive observability, reliability, and operational excellence across the data platform.

• Innovation & Continuous Improvement
• Stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends.
• Identify opportunities to enhance scalability, developer productivity, and business value through innovation.

Qualifications & Experience

Experience 15+ years of experience in data engineering or data platform roles. 5–7+ years in senior leadership roles managing large-scale data platforms and teams. Proven track record of defining and executing enterprise data strategies in complex, regulated environments. Technical Expertise Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP) and cloud-native data architectures. Extensive experience with Snowflake, including architecture, performance optimization, and governance. Strong experience with Databricks, Apache Spark, Hadoop, and distributed data processing. Experience with enterprise integration tools such as Oracle Goldengate and ODI. Strong understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, and infrastructure automation. Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and containerized environments. Knowledge of streaming and event-driven technologies (Kafka, Flink). Familiarity with AI/ML-enabled data platforms is a plus. Leadership & Business Skills Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills. Strong strategic, analytical, and commercial mindset. Ability to balance innovation, risk, speed, and operational stability. Demonstrated ability to lead through change and manage multiple priorities.