Unit Head

Job Mandate

The Head of Data Engineering will lead and manage a team of data engineers focused on building and maintaining scalable, secure, and high-quality data pipelines and drive continuous improvement of our enterprise data platforms using Azure and Databricks. This leadership role demands deep expertise in data architecture, engineering, and analytics, with a strong focus on the Azure Data Platform and Databricks ecosystem.

Duties and Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Accountability

Full accountability for delivery within the assigned unit.

Ensure seamless collaboration across data and analytics teams, ITG, and business units.

Enforce adherence to the IT SDLC and governance structure.

Data engineers can also include software engineers beyond Databricks and Azure Data Platform expertise

Technical Delivery & Platform Optimization

Oversee the design, implementation, and optimization of data pipelines, platforms, and architectures for large-scale data processing.

Drive the evolution of the data platform to meet current and future business needs, ensuring scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Collaborate with data scientists, analysts, IT, and business stakeholders to ensure data requirements are met and initiatives are executed successfully.

Act as a key advisor on data engineering capabilities and limitations.

Data Governance & Quality Assurance

Ensure the quality, integrity, security, and privacy of data across systems and platforms.

Implement governance frameworks and monitor compliance with enterprise standards.

Team Development & Performance Management

Provide leadership, mentorship, and development opportunities for the data engineering team.

Conduct performance reviews for delivery managers, architects, and team leads.

Ensure proper training and enablement to build team competency.

Resource & Vendor Management

Optimize resource allocation across teams and manage vendor relationships.

Provide support for issue resolution and risk management during execution.

Standards & Best Practices

Establish and maintain data engineering standards, best practices, and guidelines.

Promote consistency, efficiency, and quality across all data engineering activities.

Develop and implement data engineering strategy and standards to support all initiatives under the data platform. Standards and tools are essential as we scale the use of data platform and build further data pipelines. These standards may include and not limited to data quality, security, privacy, integration, transformation, performance and scalability, governance, devops. Ensures best practices in data modeling, ETL processes, etc.

Minimum Qualification Requirements

Education

Work Experience

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field.

10+ years of experience in data engineering.

Proven expertise in Azure Data Platform services and Databricks

Experience in GCP and others is a +.

Experience in heading data engineering teams

Experience managing 3rd party SI and evaluating and managing SW vendor

Strong understanding of ETL processes, data warehouses, and cloud-based data solutions

Familiarity with banking and financial services is a plus

Candidate must be willing to be based in Makati and work in Ortigas or Makati

Skills

Core Technical Skills

Expertise in Azure Data Platform (e.g., Azure Data Lake, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory)

Proficiency in Databricks (Spark, Delta Lake, MLflow)

Strong understanding of data architecture and modeling

Strong analytics skills

Advanced SQL and Python for data engineering tasks

Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices for data workflows

Knowledge of data governance frameworks (e.g., data lineage, cataloging, privacy, and security)

Performance tuning and optimization of large-scale data pipelines

Familiarity with enterprise SDLC and IT governance structures

Leadership & Management Skills

People management and team development

Strategic planning and execution

Cross-functional collaboration with IT, analytics, and business units

Vendor and resource management

Risk and issue resolution during execution

Conducting performance reviews and competency building

Soft Skills & Characteristics

Adaptable and flexible in dynamic environments

Willingness to learn and adopt new technologies

Strong communication and stakeholder engagement

Problem-solving mindset with a focus on delivery

Detail-oriented with a commitment to quality

Proactive and accountable leadership style

Ability to enforce standards while fostering innovation

Flexible to handle complex situations as necessary

Work closely with cross-functional teams and business and tech stakeholders to understand data needs and deliver solutions.

BDO Unibank, Inc. provides equal opportunity to all qualified candidates. Hiring decisions are based on job requirements and candidate qualifications, and shall not be influenced by any consideration  of race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national or ethnic origin, or disability.                                                                                                                       Requisition ID: 23028