Data Engineering Lead

About OpenSesame

While it appears to most people that we just sell training courses (over 50,000 of them), what we really offer is the opportunity for companies to upgrade the skills of each of their employees and reinvent their workforce in an AI world. We have strategic partnerships with 150+ Global 2000 companies who rely on our training programs to develop the world's most productive and admired workforces. Now we are building what comes next.

About the Team

The Data Engineering Lead will guide a lean and focused data engineering team. The team’s mission is to build and scale an AI-ready data foundation that enables reliable analytics, operational reporting, governance, and future AI initiatives across the company.

This role partners closely with analysts, business leaders, platform teams, and data consumers company-wide to improve accessibility, trust, and usability of enterprise data assets.

About the Role

This role owns the Data Governance & Accessibility program and serves as the technical leader responsible for designing scalable data architecture, improving pipeline reliability, mentoring data engineers, and enabling analysts through robust, specialized data solutions. Success in this role requires balancing hands-on technical leadership with strategic planning, cross-functional influence, and operational excellence.

Performance Objectives

30 Days

Develop a comprehensive understanding of OpenSesame’s current data ecosystem, governance practices, reporting dependencies, and analyst workflows.

Conduct a full assessment of existing pipelines, warehouse architecture, data quality gaps, lineage visibility, and AI-readiness constraints.

Establish working relationships with analytics stakeholders across departments and create a prioritized roadmap for improving governance, accessibility, and platform scalability while aligning the two-person engineering team around delivery standards and operating rhythms.

60 Days

Design and begin implementing the foundational architecture for an AI-ready data platform, including standardized ingestion patterns, governance controls, metadata management, and scalable transformation frameworks.

Introduce monitoring, alerting, and documentation standards that improve reliability and analyst trust in shared datasets.

Mentor the Data Engineers through structured technical reviews, backlog prioritization, and development planning while improving delivery velocity and reducing operational bottlenecks for analyst requests.

90 Days

Launch the first phase of the Data Governance & Accessibility program by delivering production-ready, well-documented pipelines and certified datasets that support multiple business functions.

Establish company-wide standards for data ownership, quality monitoring, lineage tracking, and access management.

Demonstrate measurable improvements in analyst efficiency, data reliability, and pipeline performance while creating a sustainable technical mentorship model that