Director of Data Platform & Operations (Remote)

Summary of Position

We are seeking a strategic technical leader to own the delivery infrastructure of our cardiovascular performance improvement platform. You will bridge the gap between software reliability (DevOps) and data integrity (DataOps), ensuring that our clinical insights are delivered with precision, security, and speed. You will own the architecture that transforms raw registry and claims data into performance improvement insights for our 30+ health system partners.

This is a leadership role, typically requiring 50-60 hours per week. While you are not the primary on-call responder, you are the escalation point, and must be ready to answer the phone in an emergency. However, a primary goal is to grow a system where this remains a very unusual occurrence.

Supervisory Responsibilities

Yes

Work Environment

Remote (US-based)

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• DataOps & Registry Management: Maintain and improve automated ingestion pipelines for clinical data, including schema evolution strategies to handle specification updates without service interruption. Maintain and improve data quality observability tools to detect drift, anomalies, and clinical impossibilities. Manage the PHI de-identification pipelines, ensuring "Safe Harbor" compliance for downstream processes. Bridge the gap between pipeline output to data lake and application-ready databases through controlled and regular release processes.
• DevOps & Infrastructure: Manage cloud infrastructure (Azure) via Infrastructure as Code (likely Bicep). Manage role-based access control (RBAC) and "Least Privilege" policies across organization. Work with vCISO and CTO to accommodate audit readiness, implement security policies, and support client questionnaire readiness. Implement Blue-Green deployment strategy to minimize downtime and allow immediate rollbacks if necessary.
• Leadership & Strategy: Build and mentor a high-performing team of Data Engineers and DevOps Engineers. Keep track of department budget (cloud spending and tooling licenses). Help architect new data deployment strategy.

Qualifications Required for Position

The ideal candidate will combine deep technical expertise in data engineering and infrastructure with the specific regulatory awareness required in healthcare.

Education:

• Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field.
• Preferred: Master's degree in a quantitative field or Health Informatics.

Experience:

• 7+ years of total experience in Data Engineering, DevOps, or Platform Engineering, with a trajectory of increasing responsibility.
• 3+ years of leadership experience (Team Lead, Manager, or Director) specifically managing technical teams in a production environment.
• Proven experience architecting HIPAA-compliant cloud environments (AWS/Azure, Azure preferred) and managing PHI data lifecycles.
• Hands-on proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (Terraform, CloudFormation) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker) for complex data workloads.
• Strong background in data pipeline orchestration (e.g., Airflow, dbt) and modern data lakehouses. Databricks and DuckDB / Ducklake experience a plus.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL for both scripting and data analysis.
• Preferred: Experience working with cardiovascular registries (NCDR, STS) or other complex clinical data sets (e.g., oncology, trauma).
• Preferred: Familiarity with HL7 FHIR standards and interoperability frameworks. While we currently focus on abstracted data, experience with direct EHR integration strategies (Epic/Cerner APIs) is a strong differentiator for our future roadmap.
• Experience implementing "Safe Harbor" or "Expert Determination" de-identification methodologies.

Soft Skills & Cultural Fit:

• You possess a "zero-defect" mindset regarding data accuracy and benchmark validity.
• We operate with complex hospital IT environments with firewalls, air-gaps, and bureaucracy, and our data is complex as well, requiring creative yet stable solutions for secure and compliant processing and governance. You need to be the type of leader who unblocks themselves and the team, finding creative technical solutions to logistical hurdles.
• Operational Empathy: You understand that a "release" isn't successful until the client gets value. You prioritize the stability of the client experience over the novelty of the tech stack.
• Regulatory Confidence: You view compliance (HIPAA, SOC 2) not as a blocker, but as a product feature that builds trust with our hospital partners. You are comfortable participating in security reviews, alongside our vCISO, with client CISOs

Reports To

CTO