Director of Data Engineering

Director of Data Engineering

About OncoLens

At OncoLens, were redefining cancer care through an innovative SaaS platform that enables multidisciplinary oncology teams to deliver personalized, evidence-based treatments to every patient. Our solutions facilitate tumor boards, streamline care coordination, enhance clinical trial matching, and track quality measuresproviding real-time insights from robust, real-world structured and unstructured data to healthcare providers and life science partners. Backed by premier healthcare investors, were rapidly scaling and seek a seasoned data engineering leader to build the critical infrastructure powering these life-changing insights.

The Opportunity

Reporting directly to the SVP of Engineering, the Director of Data Engineering will lead the strategy, execution, and team development of our data engineering function. You'll manage a dedicated team focused on ingesting, modeling, and serving oncology data leveraging Snowflake, dbt, Spark, modern data-lake architectures, and advanced GenAI/LLM technologies. This role uniquely balances strategic leadership and technical execution, combining people management, project oversight, and hands-on technical contribution.

High impact, high visibility: The pipelines your team develops will directly empower clinical insights, product enhancements, regulatory compliance, and executive-level decisions across OncoLens.

What Youll Do

• Build and nurture the team Recruit, mentor, and grow a team of data and analytics engineers, cultivating a culture focused on data quality, accountability, and continuous learning; guide personal development and ongoing professional growth.
• Drive delivery and technical strategy Closely partner with Product leadership to translate clinical and business priorities into a clear, actionable technical roadmap; oversee sprint capacity planning and manage a transparent process for balancing strategic projects with urgent requests.
• Architect and optimize data pipelines Design efficient batch and real-time ELT workflows to process structured (FHIR/EHR, claims) and unstructured (NLP/LLM-generated) data, leveraging Snowflake, dbt, Python, Spark, Iceberg, and state-of-the-art NLP/GenAI solutions.
• Enhance the data model Lead dimensional modeling, establish robust data contracts, and maintain comprehensive documentation to ensure reliability and scalability of analytics as the business grows.
• Promote quality with SDET collaboration Partner with our Software Development Engineering in Test (SDET) team to automate data validation, implement regression tests, and enforce rigorous quality standards.
• Ensure compliance and governance Set standards for data lineage, masking, security, and access controls to comply with HIPAA and SOC 2; institute automated quality monitoring and anomaly detection.
• Oversee advanced NLP and GenAI initiatives Manage sophisticated NLP-driven abstraction, summarization, and enrichment pipelines; establish quality benchmarks, support skill development, and lead vendor selection (data annotation, model evaluation, prompt engineering) ensuring compliance with clinical and regulatory standards.
• Resolve complex technical issues Provide hands-on troubleshooting for SQL query performance, dbt model optimizations, Spark job failures, and pipeline disruptions.
• Cross-team collaboration Actively engage with Product, Clinical, Customer Success, and Application Engineering teams, ensuring alignment on dependencies and clearly communicating the strategic value of data engineering deliverables.
• Implement advanced DataOps and DevOps practices Champion best practices for CI/CD, infrastructure as code (IaC, OpenTofu), automated testing, observability, and cost optimization (especially around Snowflake/dbt), in collaboration with DevOps and technical leaders.

Youll Excel in This Role If You Have

Required

• 8+ years experience in data engineering or analytics engineering, with at least 3 years managing technical teams.
• Expert proficiency in SQL and substantial hands-on experience with Snowflake or similar cloud data warehouses.
• Production-level experience with dbt (Core or Cloud), including incremental builds, comprehensive testing, and CI/CD automation.
• Strong Python skills for data processing, orchestration, and pipeline scripting.
• Practical experience using Spark (PySpark or Scala) and understanding distributed processing architectures.
• Familiarity with modern CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code practices; ability to effectively partner with DevOps/SRE teams.
• Proven track record delivering data products within regulated or high-stakes environments (healthcare, fintech, etc.).
• Exceptional communication, leadership, and project management skills to drive cross-functional alignment and accountability.

Preferred

• Experience with modern data lake technologies (Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi) and file formats (Parquet, ORC).
• Knowledge of streaming data frameworks (Kafka, Kinesis, Pulsar) and event-driven architecture.
• Understanding healthcare data standards (FHIR, HL7, EHR, claims, genomics) and regulatory compliance (HIPAA).
• Familiarity with orchestration platforms (Temporal, Airflow, Prefect) and monitoring tools (Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana).
• Previous involvement in ML/AI or NLP pipelines, especially within clinical or healthcare contexts.
• Experience managing multi-cloud or hybrid infrastructures (AWS, Azure, Alibaba Cloud).

Why Join OncoLens?

• Meaningful mission Directly contribute to improving patient outcomes through innovative oncology care solutions.
• Autonomy and leadership Fully shape and influence the strategic direction of data engineering with strong executive support.
• Cutting-edge technology stack Work with Snowflake, dbt, Spark, Python, Iceberg, AWS, Temporal, OpenTofu, Spacelift, and Kafka.
• Accelerated career growth Play a key role in shaping processes, architecture, and culture in a high-growth environment.
• Remote-first culture Enjoy flexible working conditions, competitive compensation, equity, top-tier benefits, and generous PTO.

Ready to architect the data platform driving transformative oncology care? Apply today and make an impact at OncoLens.