Senior Director, Data Engineering

Job Requisition ID #

25WD93177

Position Overview

Sitting in our Growth Experience Technology organization which supports our GTM/Business Systems and .com technology, we are seeking a Senior Director, Data Engineering to lead Autodesk's end-to-end data engineering strategy across batch and real-time platforms. This role is accountable for defining how data is adopted and operationalized at enterprise scale to drive measurable business outcomes, not just technical availability.

This leader will own Autodesk's GTM data foundations, including warehouse, Batch, and real-time processing by partnering with Platform & Architecture teams, and ensure they enable reliable decision-making, AI-driven use cases, and cost-efficient operations across Finance, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Digital teams(.com). Success in this role is measured by active business adoption, improved decision velocity, and sustained value creation from data investments.

The role partners closely with the Platform Services and Emerging Technologies (PSET) Infrastructure organization to ensure data engineering solutions are built on secure, scalable, and resilient platforms, while establishing clear governance standards, common data models, and shared metrics that influence how teams across Autodesk build and use data.

As a senior leader, you will guide a global organization to deliver AI-ready data solutions, shape company-wide data practices, and prioritize investments based on business impact, cost discipline, and long-term scalability. This role requires strong cross-functional leadership, executive-level communication, and a mindset focused on continuously optimizing the value of Autodesk's data and AI ecosystem.

This role works with teammates across the globe and includes up to 25% travel for in-person collaboration, conferences, and team offsites. The role is preferred hybrid to our San Francisco office; candidates based outside San Francisco should expect increased travel.

Responsibilities

Data Engineering & Architecture

• Own measurable adoption outcomes by ensuring data solutions are actively used to drive business decisions, including defined success metrics such as active users, decision velocity, revenue impact, and deprecation of low-value data assets
• Lead enterprise data solutions and related AI enablement to deliver monetizable insights through automation, accuracy, and scale
• Accountable for optimizing cost versus business value across data investments, ensuring spend is justified by measurable revenue impact, margin improvement, or operating efficiency-not platform utilization alone
• Lead batch and real-time data engineering across Spark, Databricks, Snowflake, DBT, Nexla, BigQuery for batch processing and Kafka, Flink, streaming frameworks for real-time processing.
• Collaborate with PSET Infrastructure team to design reliable, scalable platforms while guiding your team to build robust data pipelines, models, and AI-ready data solution using PSET infrastructure
• Evangelize data strategy and best practices across the COO & CFO organization to ensure adoption and alignment.
• Implement and maintain a common data model to standardize definitions across Finance, Marketing, Sales, and Digital Properties (.com) domains
• Ensure standardized metrics and semantic consistency to enable accurate reporting and BI performance
• Define and execute data lake strategies using modern table formats (Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi) to support scalability, schema evolution, and cost-efficient storage
• Establish SLA/SLO tiers for batch and streaming data freshness, availability, and quality
• Embed lineage, observability, privacy, and compliance into all data solutions
• Implements AI-enabled analytics to improve insights and decision-making that accelerate digital transformation and cross-functional impact
• Partner with Data Science and Product teams to enable AI/ML applications, including personalization, recommendation systems, fraud/risk detection, predictive analytics, and AI-driven workflows
• Provide governed feature stores with consistent online/offline access and freshness guarantees
• Build data pipelines that support finance-grade reconciliations and sales/marketing attribution

Organizational Leadership

• Lead a multi-level data engineering organization (senior managers/directors, senior ICs) with clear career growth, development, and succession planning
• Define and deliver OKRs focused on adoption, reliability, cost efficiency, and compliance
• Mentor senior leaders in data engineering, MDM, governance, and data modeling best practices
• Partner closely with PSET Infrastructure, Product, Security, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Trust/Security, and Support to deliver measurable business outcomes

Minimum Qualifications

• 15+ years of data engineering leadership, including 8+ years managing large, multi-team organizations
• Proven expertise in real-time data platforms such as Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming, or equivalents
• Extensive experience with lakehouse and warehouse platforms, including Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, and large-scale Spark, Flink, and streaming technologies
• Hands-on experience with modern data lake formats like Apache Iceberg
• Strong knowledge of Master Data Management (MDM) principles and tools
• Designed and operated enterprise data models optimized for BI and visualization, including star/snowflake schemas and semantic layers
• Demonstrated track record in governance, lineage, compliance, and cost optimization
• Exceptional executive communication and influencing skills, with experience driving alignment across complex organizations

Preferred Qualifications

• Delivered LLM/RAG/AI-powered systems using real-time event data
• Designed domain-oriented data contracts and self-service frameworks
• Built systems powering ecommerce personalization, marketing automation, sales analytics, or finance reconciliation
• Familiar with CDC pipelines, schema registries, and eventing standards (CloudEvents, Avro, Protobuf)

Learn More

About Autodesk

Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software - from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.

We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk - it's at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.

When you're an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!

Benefits

From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work. Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/

Salary transparency

Salary is one part of Autodesk's competitive compensation package. For U.S.-based roles, we expect a starting base salary between $210,800 and $341,000. Offers are based on the candidate's experience and geographic location, and may exceed this range. In addition to base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Autodesk, we're building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world. Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic. We also consider for employment all qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

Diversity & Belonging

We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/diversity-and-belonging

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Client-provided location(s): San Francisco, CA

Job ID: autodesk-25WD93177

Employment Type: FULL_TIME

Posted: 2026-01-28T19:16:14