Director, Data Platform & Products

Director, Data Platform & Products

The Director, Data Platform & Products, will lead the development of a unified, cloud-native analytics environment that enables high-quality data ingestion, modeling, governance collaboration, and scalable data products serving both Santander Bank and Openbank US. This leader will build the data foundation that powers product performance reporting, CX and journey analytics, personalization, and AI-driven decisioning. The role blends deep data engineering experience with product leadership to deliver a modern platform that accelerates analytics and unlocks self-serve insight generation through agentic AI frameworks.

$/yr - $/yr

Lead the design and delivery of a unified enterprise data platform with standardized ingestion, modeling, and semantic layers that support analytics, reporting, personalization, and AI use cases.

• Oversee the end-to-end data lifecycle, ensuring timely, reliable, and well-structured data to support product performance dashboards, CX and journey measurement, and customer insights.
• Collaborate with CDO and governance teams to embed lineage, data quality, metadata, and semantic standards into platform architecture and operations.
• Define and execute the platform roadmap, translating business and product needs into scalable data products and reusable analytical assets.
• Ensure new Openbank product launches are enabled with robust data pipelines and analytic foundations.
• Build and expand self-serve analytics capabilities, including agentic AI–powered tools that automate insight generation and accelerate decision-making.
• Lead and mentor teams across data engineering, platform operations, and data product management; partner closely with cross-functional executives to drive adoption and business impact.
• Develops and maintains relationships with senior executives in the business lines.
• Builds in-depth knowledge of the business success drivers, industry trends, regulatory issues and competitive marketplace to develop value added business solutions.
• Advises on implementation of advanced data analytics models with effective and practical short- and long-term actionable solutions within the businesses.
• Grows the data and technical environment by bringing new technologies and techniques to create efficient process around data extraction, aggregation and analytics.
• Initiates and manages strategic external partnerships to supplement internal advanced data analytics capabilities, as desired.
• Drives pragmatic approaches to solving key complex business problems through data analysis, predictive modeling and machine learning techniques.
• Leads verbal and written communications with colleagues and business partners at all levels to clearly articulate the findings of analytical models and assist in driving solutions.

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent work experience:
  Statistics, Computer Science, Physical Sciences, Economics, or a equivalent technical field.
  
  - Required.
• Master's Degree:
  Statistics, Computer Science, Physical Sciences, Economics, or a equivalent quantitative field.
  
  - Required.

• 10+ years of experience in data engineering, ETL/ELT, data warehousing, and cloud-native data architectures.
  
  - Required.
• Deep expertise with modern cloud data platforms and warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, AWS) and associated ecosystem tools.
• Financial services industry experience a plus.
  
  - Preferred.
• 9+ Years Experience leading and managing a team of data scientists, product or business analysts - Required.
• 9+ Years Experience working across functions to communicate the value of the data and analytic team's work - Required.
• Strong stakeholder engagement, communication, and influence across technical and executive audiences.
• Proven success building enterprise-scale data platforms and leading platform product roadmaps.
• Demonstrated experience with building custom statistical models, analyzing unstructured data, and/or machine learning is highly desirable.
• Ability to bring the right data technique to solve the problem in an explainable manner to the business.
• Consultative nature, with a proven track record of using data to provide actionable business results.
• Superior communication and persuasion skills; talent for storytelling, visualization and creating insights from data to deliver practical recommendations for business action.
• Experience managing teams of data scientist and analytical professionals.
• Experience managing projects, budgets and schedules to successful completion.
• Entrepreneurial spirit, persistence, and resilience; comfort with and ability to thrive on and drive change while navigating ambiguity.
• Proven relationship building and collaboration skills; ability to influence and drive outcomes in large, matrixed and complex organizations.

• Established work history or equivalent demonstrated through a combination of work experience, training, military service, or education.
• Experience in Microsoft Office products.