Director of Engineering - Data Platform

Lead the engineering function behind an early-stage data platform built for regulated enterprises.

At FormativGroup, we help organizations modernize the systems, data, and workflows that keep their businesses moving.

We are hiring a Director of Engineering to lead and grow the engineering org behind a perimeter-safe data lineage and migration impact-analysis platform for regulated enterprises. We're early: a real, working product becoming a standalone business. This is a build.

You will own how we ship: delivery, quality, security readiness, engineering process, and roadmap execution. You'll partner closely with the Chief Architect, who holds the deep product IP, while bringing order to a capable distributed team.

What You'll Work On

As Director of Engineering, you will:

• Lead a distributed engineering team across platform/product engineering, connectors, QA, DevOps/infra, AI implementation, data governance, and support.
• Own delivery, quality, release discipline, and execution of the technical roadmap.
• Install engineering discipline where it's thin: automated testing, QA, CI/CD, release governance, and versioning.
• Drive repeatable, perimeter-safe deployments, including containerization, infrastructure-as-code, secure deployment, and SOC 2 readiness.
• Partner with the Chief Architect on the connector framework, canonical metadata model, architecture decisions, and product IP.
• Build the team: assess current talent, retain the strong, hire the gaps, and align the team plan to the roadmap.
• Push practical AI use across coding, review, testing, ops, and engineering productivity.

What You'll Bring

You will likely be successful in this role if you have:

• Engineering leadership experience; you have run and grown teams, managed engineers, owned delivery, and shipped real product.
• Hands-on technical depth in data platforms, metadata, backend systems, or platform engineering; enough to earn the respect of strong engineers.
• Experience building or rebuilding an engineering function from the ground up, especially in a startup or early-stage environment.
• Experience installing testing, QA, CI/CD, release process, or quality practices where they did not already exist.
• Experience leading distributed or offshore engineering teams across time zones.
• Security and compliance literacy for regulated buyers, including SOC 2, audit logging, SSO, data security, or secure deployment.
• Strong AI fluency, with concrete examples of how you use AI in your own work and across engineering teams.

How You Work

• You are a player-coach: technical enough to go deep, practical enough to ship, and comfortable getting into the work when needed.
• You operate with incomplete information and define the path when there is not one.
• You bring order without slowing momentum; you raise the floor on quality, process, and security while keeping the team building.

Bonus Points If You Have

• Experience taking an early-stage product to enterprise-grade maturity.
• Background in regulated industries such as financial services, insurance, healthcare, or government.
• Familiarity with perimeter/on-prem deployment, lineage, metadata, graph data, or migration impact-analysis problems.

What Success Looks Like

• The team has clear ownership, a stronger delivery rhythm, and a credible roadmap-to-release model.
• Testing, QA, CI/CD, release governance, and versioning are in place without slowing product momentum.
• The product is moving toward enterprise-grade readiness for regulated buyers.
• You are a trusted partner to the Chief Architect and a credible leader for engineers, product stakeholders, and executives.

Why Join FormativGroup

At FormativGroup, you’ll work with people who are practical, collaborative, and focused on solving meaningful business and technology problems. We’re growing, which means you’ll have opportunities to contribute ideas, work closely with experienced leaders, and help shape how we deliver for clients.

Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa currently.

To be considered for this position, candidates must reside in one of the following U.S. states: AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, TN, TX, VA, WI, and Washington DC. Candidates residing outside these states are not eligible for consideration currently.