Engineering Manager, Web Data Acquisition

Company Description

NielsenIQ is a global consumer intelligence company that helps clients understand consumer buying behavior and identify opportunities for growth. Our web data acquisition capabilities collect and transform public digital-commerce data that powers data-driven products and customer insights. 

Job Description

The Engineering Manager, Web Data Acquisition leads an Europe-based engineering team responsible for building, operating, and improving scalable web-scraping capabilities. Reporting to a Senior Manager or Director, this role combines people leadership, technical delivery, operational ownership, and cross-functional execution. The manager is accountable for the performance and development of individual contributors in Europe and works with global Engineering, Product, Data Operations, and delivery stakeholders to translate priorities into reliable outcomes.

Lead and Develop the Europe Team 

• Manage, coach, and develop Europe-based engineers and associates, with clear goals, regular feedback, career development, and performance accountability. 
• Build an inclusive, high-trust team culture that values ownership, learning, engineering quality, and continuous improvement. 
• Plan team capacity, skills development, hiring, onboarding, succession coverage, and workload allocation for the Europe team. 
• Create clarity on priorities, decision rights, delivery expectations, and escalation paths. 

Own Scraping Engineering Delivery 

• Lead the design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance of web scrapers and supporting services. 
• Ensure reliable acquisition of retailer and marketplace data while managing changing websites, anti-bot defenses, data-quality requirements, and operational constraints. 
• Drive predictable execution across new-source onboarding, change requests, production support, technical debt, and platform improvements. 
• Use delivery and operational metrics to identify risks, remove bottlenecks, and improve throughput, quality, and resilience. 

Drive Engineering and Operational Excellence 

• Establish practical engineering standards for code quality, reviews, testing, observability, documentation, security, and production readiness. 
• Improve automation, monitoring, alerting, failure diagnosis, recovery, and root-cause follow-through for scraping workflows. 
• Balance short-term delivery commitments with maintainability, scalability, cost, and platform alignment. 
• Promote responsible collection practices and adherence to applicable NIQ policies, contractual requirements, and legal guidance. 

Partner Across the Organization 

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Data Operations, Customer Success, and delivery teams to clarify requirements and sequence work. 
• Communicate delivery health, dependencies, technical risks, trade-offs, and recovery plans to senior stakeholders. 
• Coordinate with peer managers and technical leaders across locations while retaining direct people-management scope for Europe-based associates only. 
• Contribute to planning, architecture discussions, operational reviews, and continuous-improvement initiatives for web data acquisition. 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications 

• Experience managing software engineers or data-engineering professionals, including goal setting, coaching, performance management, and career development. 
• Strong software-engineering background with experience delivering production systems in a modern programming language such as Python, Java, C#, or JavaScript/TypeScript. 
• Experience with web scraping, browser automation, crawling, data pipelines, distributed systems, or high-volume data collection. 
• Working knowledge of HTTP, HTML/DOM, APIs, proxies, browser behavior, monitoring, incident response, and production support. 
• Ability to lead delivery across ambiguous requirements, operational pressure, and competing priorities. 
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical risks and trade-offs to non-specialists. 
• Experience working with cross-functional and geographically distributed stakeholders. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience with retailer, marketplace, digital-commerce, or digital-shelf data. 
• Experience operating cloud-based services and automated data-processing workflows. 
• Familiarity with anti-bot techniques, headless browsers, scraper observability, data-quality controls, and resilient extraction patterns. 
• Experience improving team operating rhythms, delivery metrics, incident practices, and engineering productivity. 
• Experience hiring and scaling engineering teams. 

Success in This Role 

• The team has clear priorities, strong engagement, effective coaching, and reliable execution. 
• Scraping services become more predictable, observable, maintainable, and resilient. 
• New and changed data sources are delivered with appropriate quality controls and operational readiness. 
• Stakeholders have timely visibility into delivery status, capacity, risks, and trade-offs. 
• Technical debt and recurring operational issues are systematically reduced. 

Additional Information

Our Benefits

• Flexible working environment
• Volunteer time off
• LinkedIn Learning
• Employee-Assistance-Program (EAP)

NIQ may utilize artificial intelligence (AI) tools at various stages of the recruitment process, including résumé screening, candidate assessments, interview scheduling, job matching, communication support, and certain administrative tasks that help streamline workflows. These tools are intended to improve efficiency and support fair and consistent evaluation based on job-related criteria. All use of AI is governed by NIQ’s principles of fairness, transparency, human oversight, and inclusion. Final hiring decisions are made exclusively by humans. NIQ regularly reviews its AI tools to help mitigate bias and ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations. If you have questions, require accommodations, or wish to request human review were permitted by law, please contact your local HR representative. For more information, please visit NIQ’s AI Safety Policies and Guiding Principles: https://nielseniq.com/global/en/info/niqs-ai-safety-policies/

About NIQ

NIQ is the world’s leading consumer intelligence company, delivering the most complete understanding of consumer buying behavior and revealing new pathways to growth. In 2023, NIQ combined with GfK, bringing together the two industry leaders with unparalleled global reach. With a holistic retail read and the most comprehensive consumer insights—delivered with advanced analytics through state-of-the-art platforms—NIQ delivers the Full View™. NIQ is an Advent International portfolio company with operations in 100+ markets, covering more than 90% of the world’s population.

For more information, visit NIQ.com

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Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At NIQ, we are steadfast in our commitment to fostering an inclusive workplace that mirrors the rich diversity of the communities and markets we serve. We believe that embracing a wide range of perspectives drives innovation and excellence.  All employment decisions at NIQ are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws. We invite individuals who share our dedication to inclusivity and equity to join us in making a meaningful impact. To learn more about our ongoing efforts in diversity and inclusion, please visit the https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/diversity-inclusion