Director - Data Platform Engineering

We are looking for a senior data leader to join Simple Machines in Sydney as part of our Global Data Practice leadership team.

This is a strategic and hands-on leadership role focused on helping shape the future direction of our data platform capability across ANZ. The individual will play a key role in defining our propositions, strengthening our technical capability, and helping clients modernise their data ecosystems for an AI-native future.

The role requires someone equally comfortable operating at executive, architectural, commercial, and delivery levels. We are looking for a leader who understands where enterprise data platforms are heading over the next five years, not where they were five years ago.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

• Part of the Global Data Practice leadership team
• Helping define and evolve Simple Machines’ data platform propositions, technical direction, and strategic positioning
• Advising enterprise clients on modern data platform strategy, architecture, operating models, and AI readiness
• Supporting organisations as they evolve from traditional centralised data platforms toward AI-native, real-time, and data product-oriented operating models
• Working closely with Engagement Managers and senior leadership across major strategic initiatives
• Leading architecture and technical direction for complex enterprise data platform and transformation programs
• Acting as a senior technical counterpart across strategic client engagements and partner relationships
• Pre-sales, proposal development, technical solution shaping, and executive stakeholder engagement
• Building trusted relationships with strategic technology partners and staying current with emerging platform capabilities and market direction
• Supporting recruitment, mentoring, capability uplift, and practice development across the broader engineering organisation
• Leading major client initiatives across data engineering, platform modernisation, AI enablement, and operational data systems
• Contributing to thought leadership, market positioning, and growth initiatives across ANZ.

Must-Haves

• 10+ years’ experience across data engineering, data platforms, analytics engineering, or data architecture
• Proven consultancy and enterprise client-facing experience
• Strong pre-sales, proposal development, and solution shaping capability
• Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering modern cloud-native data platforms at enterprise scale
• Strong experience developing solutions centred around data products and reusable enterprise data capabilities
• Deep understanding of data mesh principles, federated governance, and scalable domain-oriented data ownership models
• Experience designing platforms and architectures to support AI-native use cases, machine learning systems, agentic workflows, and intelligent software platforms
• Strong understanding of real-time and event-driven architectures, including streaming data systems and low-latency processing patterns
• Experience building platforms that support governed, discoverable, reusable, and operationalised data products across large organisations
• Familiarity with contemporary data stack technologies and modern engineering practices
• Strong understanding of platform architecture, distributed data systems, orchestration, governance, and scalable data product design
• Experience with technologies and ecosystems such as GCP, AWS, Azure, Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, Spark, dbt, Kubernetes, Airflow, ML/AI enablement, or similar modern platform tooling
• Strong commercial acumen and ability to engage credibly with senior technical and business stakeholders
• Experience leading major enterprise initiatives and high-performing engineering teams
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, high-performance consultancy environment

Ideal Profile

We are looking for someone who combines strong technical depth with commercial and strategic capability. This is not purely a delivery management role, nor is it purely architectural.