Data Platform Manager

About Samsung Food

Samsung Food is a food platform that helps millions of users worldwide find and save recipes, connect with like-minded foodie communities, and save time and money on planning, cooking, and shopping. You’ll find Samsung Food across various devices, including mobile apps, web, voice, Samsung Family-Hub fridges, and more.

We’re a remote-first, globally distributed team of 100+ people based across the US, UK, Europe, Africa, Korea, Georgia, and beyond. We’ve been fully distributed since 2016 and pioneered many of the practices that are now standard in remote workplaces. Interested in learning more? Visit
Samsung Food Careers.

 

Job Purpose

 

We are seeking a Data Platform Manager who combines strong technical leadership with hands-on development expertise. Reporting to the Foundation Tribes engineering manager, this role balances people management and technical direction with active software development.

As for our tech stack, we use: 

• Primary Development: Python, SQL, Scala 
• Data Warehouse: Clickhouse
• Data Storage: MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
• Cloud Technologies: Google Cloud (Storage, PubSub, DataFlow)
• Data Pipeline Development: Apache Airflow
• Data Transformation: dbt
• Analytics Tools: Redash, Kubit 

Position Overview

As the Data Platform Manager, you will lead and grow our data engineering team while also owning the foundational frameworks that power governance and real-time business data. You’ll play a key role in shaping and delivering our data infrastructure, event pipeline architecture, and compliance-ready metadata systems. This role sits at the intersection of platform reliability, developer experience, and data quality—supporting teams across Analytics, Machine Learning, Product, and the Food Graph.

You will oversee three core pillars:

1. Data Engineering — Deliver and evolve the batch and streaming pipelines that power core data products and insights.
   
   
2. Business Event Framework — Maintain and expand our internal framework for publishing, validating, and consuming product events in a scalable, schema-governed way.
   
   
3. Data Governance Framework & Inquiries — Lead implementation of automated data classification and lineage tracking, coordinate the Data Governance Guild, and act as the point of contact for metadata and compliance-related questions.
   
   

This role blends technical leadership and implementation: approximately 50% of your time will focus on management and strategic planning, while 50% will be dedicated to hands-on engineering—designing architecture, writing production code, and mentoring team members through example.

Key Responsibilities

Team Development and Growth

The role requires building and nurturing a high-performing data engineering team through:

• Conducting impactful one-on-one meetings that focus on professional growth and team alignment
• Participating in comprehensive performance review processes and providing continuous constructive feedback
• Creating individualized development plans that align team member aspirations with organizational needs
• Fostering a collaborative learning environment through mentorship and knowledge sharing

Technical Direction

You will guide the technical vision of the team by:

• Establishing and maintaining high engineering standards through code reviews and architectural guidance
• Leading technical design reviews that ensure solution quality and alignment with business objectives
• Developing coding standards and best practices that promote technical excellence
• Creating a culture that balances innovation with operational reliability

Stakeholder Management

Success in this role requires effective leadership across the organization through:

• Aligning team objectives with broader organizational goals
• Managing cross-team relationships to ensure effective delivery
• Partnering with Legal and IS consultants on data safety and compliance
• Communicating team progress and challenges to senior leadership
• Planning team capacity and resource allocation to meet stakeholder needs

Hands-on Data Engineering

• Develop and maintain production-grade data pipelines using Python and modern data engineering tools
• Create and optimize Airflow DAGs that ensure reliable data orchestration
• Build and enhance dbt models for efficient data transformation
• Implement robust data quality monitoring systems
• Design and implement scalable data warehouse structures
• Create integrations with analytics platforms including Redash, Kubit, and Roadway

Business Event Framework

• Maintain a system for managing, publishing and consuming business events
• Partner with product and backend teams to ensure proper instrumentation and adoption
• Monitor event flows, enforce schema versioning, and support downstream consumers (analytics, ML, etc.)

Data Governance Framework & Inquiries

• Implement lineage tracking, classification tagging, and metadata management
• Lead the Data Governance Guild and drive adoption across engineering teams
• Maintain visibility into metadata coverage and data flows across the organization
• Serve as the internal and external point of contact for data governance and compliance-related inquiries

Required Qualifications

Your background should demonstrate excellence in both leadership and technical execution, including:

• 2+ years of people management experience, with a proven track record in performance management and team development
• 4+ years of data engineering experience
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and grow technical teams while maintaining technical credibility
• Strong software development skills with extensive Python experience
• Strong knowledge of ClickHouse or comparable columnar databases is essential.
• Practical experience building production-grade data pipelines using Airflow
• Hands-on expertise with dbt models and transformations
• Experience with Docker and container orchestration
• Deep understanding of data warehouse architecture and implementation
• Proficiency in SQL query optimization and database performance tuning
• Understanding of various data architecture patterns (e.g., Lambda/Kappa)
• Knowledge of data governance practices such as lineage, classification and metadata tooling
• Experience implementing or operating within streaming/event-driven architectures, business event collection and taxonomy.
  
  

Technical Stack Expertise

Success in this role requires proficiency in:

• Primary Development: Python, SQL, Scala (optional)
• Data Warehouse: Clickhouse
• Data Storages: MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
• Cloud Technologies: Google Cloud (Storage, PubSub, DataFlow)
• Data Pipeline Development: Apache Airflow
• Data Transformation: dbt
• Analytics Tools: Redash, Kubit or similar

What We Offer

• 100% remote and flexible work schedule (full-time contractor role, 40 hours per week)
• A distributed team environment with opportunities for collaboration across time zones
• The chance to contribute to building the #1 food platform, integrated with Samsung.