Senior Manager, Data Engineering

About the Organization

KIPP Public Schools is a national network of tuition-free public charter schools that prepares students with the skills and confidence to create the future they want for themselves, their communities, and us all. We are a network of 279 schools, nearly 16,500 educators, and nearly 210,000 students and alumni.

Our mission: Together with families and communities, we create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose-college, career, and beyond-so they can lead fulfilling lives and build a more just world.

Our vision: Every child grows up free to create the future they want for themselves and their communities.

The KIPP Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports KIPP public charter schools across the country. The KIPP Foundation helps to develop outstanding educators to lead KIPP schools; provides tools and resources for excellent teaching and learning; promotes innovation; and facilitates the exchange of insights and ideas across KIPP and other public schools and organizations.

About Our Values:

Excellent Results for Students: We value results over effort and know that our work is not finished until all students thrive. We maintain high expectations for self, team, and students. We drive outcomes by operating with agility, removing barriers, differentiating support, and prioritizing student-centered solutions-especially for those at the margins.

Collective Impact: We are one team. We win together. We embody a one-team mindset by working collaboratively across teams, aligning goals, and leveraging the strengths of all teammates. We build trust-based relationships and ensure inclusive decision-making by engaging those closest to the work. We provide clarity through simple, repeatable systems and goals that enable transformational outcomes.

Courageous Action: Our belief in what we can achieve is unwavering, fueling our optimism and commitment to overcome any challenge. We demonstrate an unwavering belief in students' potential and a commitment to addressing systemic inequities. We approach challenges with resilience, a solutions-focused mindset, and adaptability. We foster a psychologically safe environment centered on trust and accountability where feedback is encouraged. We leverage data to reflect on progress, own setbacks, celebrate successes, and continuously improve to maximize impact.

About The Position

This role is responsible for creating, managing, and optimizing the data and BI platforms, and for partnering closely with stakeholders to drive requirements gathering, defining data solution architecture, and building and delivering data pipeline solutions (including, but not limited to, ETL/Extract-Transform-Load, pipelines, data models, and monitoring controls). This is a hands-on role that creates, drives and tracks project plans for Business Intelligence (BI) platform and Data Engineering solutions delivery, and leads sprint planning and completion for assigned pipelines to meet business needs while implementing solutions with continuous improvement. This role reports to the Senior Director of Data Management and Governance.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the end-to-end delivery of data architecture and pipeline solutions, including holistic planning, requirements-gathering, design, build, and testing strategy per assessed business needs. Design and evolve the semantic layer to be the well-governed single source of truth for business intelligence and ensure it is meeting all reporting needs.

• Design and operationalize data quality framework to ensure trust and consistency in data, with proactive monitoring, alerting, root cause analysis (including troubleshooting and resolution) with impact and sizing assessments for all critical data pipelines.

• Manage and continuously improve data architecture and pipelines, establishing clear monitoring standards and operational controls.

• Lead the planning for BI (Tableau) platform management, updates, enhancements, maintenance and stakeholder communication along with ensuring high availability, performance, and security. Ensure optimal data/BI platform operations and governance standards implementation aligned to operational best practices.

• Establish foundational capabilities for AI-enabled analytics capabilities in BI platform and evolve them as organization needs mature.

• Partner closely with stakeholders on the Analytics, Application Development, Data Collection Strategy & Operations, IT Operations, Product Management, and Regional Data Systems & Strategy teams to lead communication and own, create, drive, track, and execute project plans for owned workstreams, effectively managing competing priorities to ensure data availability and accuracy for users.

• Lead sprint planning for assigned workstreams. Work on sprint execution and release delivery, ensuring aligned planning, timely outcomes, and resolution of dependencies and blockers to drive operational excellence.

• Ensure transparency into progress, risks, and dependencies through consistent tracking and communication mechanisms.

• Guide team member(s) on developing data and BI solutions with thorough validation and quality checks, and ensure up-to-date documentation.

• Manage and develop one or more team members (FTEs or contractors) as needed, providing clear expectations, timely feedback, and coaching to support performance and accountability for results.

Skills and Mindsets

• Mission and Student Focus: Demonstrates passion and commitment to KIPP’s mission and possesses the desire and ability to uphold KIPP’s Core Values (Focus on Excellent Results, Collective Impact, and Courageous Action)

• Self-Management: Demonstrated record of co-creating ambitious goals with their managers - and driving toward desired outcomes; Effectively monitors progress toward goals for multiple workstreams; Leverages understanding of an organization’s operating model, structure, and core operational process to effectively drive work to achieve goals; effectively works through direct reports and peers to follow through on commitments, ensuring others do the same.

• Work Management: Effectively drives work they own through clear action planning. Manages time effectively around competing priorities. Skilled in creating and executing project plans through partnership with stakeholders and effective delegation to achieve intended results on time. Skilled in knowledge management.

• Process Management: Able to build and align goals and project plans with organization priorities; leverages relevant organizational processes and systems to execute work; can build and maintain knowledge management systems; effectively develops and codifies processes to ensure efficiency, alignment with organizational processes, and to improve work quality.

• Problem-Solving: Generates solutions outside of their direct work and shrinks problems to solve independently. Shows initiative in generating and recommending ideas and solutions within their own workstreams. Anticipates risks and develops proactive solutions that support their team.

• People Management & Development: Effective at developing and coaching teammates. Skilled in setting and managing both performance and development goals. Provides timely and actionable feedback to drive teammate development and performance; demonstrates accountability for the goals of their direct reports

• Technical Proficiency: Has knowledge and skills in SQL, Spark, Pyspark, on-prem and cloud-based data platform management (SQL Server, Fabric/Snowflake, etc.) and architecture, CI/CD, ETL/data pipelines, version control, SSIS, agile sprint operations, project management tools, and machine learning principles.

Experience and Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience in data engineering, infrastructure engineering, or a closely related technical field.

• Experience with SQL-based data platforms (such as SQL Server) and modern cloud-based data warehouse/lakehouse platforms such as Fabric/OneLake, Snowflake, or Databricks including building & managing ETLs/ pipelines.

• Experience managing and mentoring data engineers.

• Strong technical proficiency in SSIS, Spark, PySpark, and SQL.

• Demonstrated experience and expertise managing Tableau infrastructure (on-prem and cloud) and operations.

• Experience with version control and CI/CD workflows using Git and platforms such as Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, or Azure DevOps.

• Experience with SQL Server and MS Fabric/OneLake preferred.

• Bachelor’s degree in data engineering, computer science, information systems, or a related field preferred; Master’s degree preferred.

Work Conditions

• Travel: Low Travel: 10% (20 days per year)

• Full, exempt role

Location

It is preferred, but not mandatory for this role to be based out of a KIPP Foundation office. This role also has the option of working from a remote office full-time. KIPP Foundation offices are in NYC and Chicago.

Compensation and Benefits

In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles in locations where legally required. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors, including but not limited to external market data, internal equity, and relevant experience. The salary range for this position is $120,000-145,000. In addition, KIPP Foundation provides a variety of benefits to employees, including:

• 25 holidays for + 18 days additional flexible PTO days (flexible PTO increases to 23 days for years 3 and 4 and to 28 days for years 5+).

• 100% paid parental leave

• 100% coverage of the premium for employee and 75% for employee + family’s medical/dental/vision plans.

• Wellness benefits such as fitness reimbursements, discounted tickets to theme parks/attractions, backup care support for children and adults/elders, and our employee assistance program

• Finance Security benefits include such as a 401K retirement plan with 4% match, employer-sponsored legal plans, life/disability insurance, and flexible spending accounts

KIPP Foundation embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the students and communities with whom we work and the world that’s around them. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.