Sr. Director, Platform Engineering – Consumer Data

About TEGNA

TEGNA Inc. (NYSE: TGNA) helps people thrive in their local communities by providing the trusted local news and services that matter most. With 64 television stations in 51 U.S. markets, TEGNA reaches more than 100 million people monthly across the web, mobile apps, streaming, and linear television. Together, we are building a sustainable future for local news.

 

The Sr Director, Data Products Engineering is a hands-on technical leader responsible for defining and executing the roadmap for our enterprise-grade customer data platform (CDP). This role is critical in leveraging large-scale, real-time consumer data to engineer delightful consumer experiences, enable hyper-personalization across all touchpoints, and optimize marketing activation through advanced analytics and AI/ML models. This position provides deep technical guidance and oversight to a high-performing team of data and platform specialists, collaborating cross-functionally to maximize the CDP's potential and directly contribute to increased engagement and consumer loyalty.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and articulate a clear, actionable technical vision and roadmap for the CDP, ensuring alignment with overarching business objectives, marketing strategies, and enterprise data architecture principles. This includes defining future state capabilities, evaluating emerging technologies, and proposing scalable solutions.
• Provide end-to-end oversight into the design, development, implementation, and operational management of the CDP. This includes data ingestion pipelines (batch and streaming), ETL/ELT processes, identity resolution frameworks, segmentation, and API integrations.
• Ensure the platform's scalability, reliability, performance, security, and cost-efficiency.
• Establish, implement, and enforce robust data governance policies and procedures, including metadata management, data lineage tracking, data cataloging, and data quality assurance frameworks.
• Build and mentor a high-performing, cross-functional technical team.
• Partner closely with Content, Product, Marketing, and Data Analytics teams to seamlessly integrate the CDP into core business processes and workflows.
• Drive requirements gathering of new data products and features.
• Define and implement technical strategies and processes for leveraging the CDP to drive personalized customer journeys, targeted digital marketing campaigns, audience segmentation, and advanced predictive analytics across all platforms.
• Oversee the activation of audiences across various downstream marketing and advertising platforms.
• Implement observability solutions for the CDP, providing regular technical performance reports, data insights, and strategic recommendations to executive stakeholders.
• Manage technical relationships with CDP vendors, data providers, and other technology partners.

Required Skills:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or similar field.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in designing, building, and managing large-scale data platforms, distributed systems, and/or customer data platforms, with a strong emphasis on data-driven marketing and analytics.
• 5+ years of experience leading and managing onshore and off shore technical teams, including data engineering, data architecture, and/or AI / ML Ops functions.
• Deep technical understanding and hands-on experience with CDP platforms (e.g., RudderStack, 1Plusx), data warehousing solutions (e.g., Snowflake, Amazon Redshift), data lake architectures, and big data technologies (e.g., Spark, Hadoop).
• Proven expertise in data modeling (dimensional, relational, graph), ETL/ELT pipeline development, real-time data processing, and event-driven architecture using technologies like Kafka, Kinesis, or Flink.
• Proficiency in programming languages (e.g., Python, Scala, Java) and expert-level SQL.
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines for automated deployment and management of data infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of identity resolution methodologies, consent management platforms, and privacy-enhancing technologies.
• Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, and system design skills.
• Proven ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional technical and business teams, influencing stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong leadership capabilities, with a focus on technical mentorship, talent development, and fostering a culture of innovation and operational excellence.

 Desired Skills:

• Experience with specific data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau) for advanced reporting and dashboarding.
• Experience or familiarity with the following marketing tech stack - MMP (Kochava), CEP (Braze), Product analytics (Mixpanel or Amplitude)
• Understanding of A/B testing frameworks and experimentation platforms.
• Hands-on experience with machine learning operations (MLOps) and deploying predictive models into production environments.
• Relevant Certifications in cloud platforms.
• Experience within the OTT media, streaming platforms, content recommendation engines, and viewer behavior analytics domains.

Pay Range $180,000—$210,000 USD

Benefits: 

TEGNA offers comprehensive benefits designed to safeguard the physical, mental and financial health of our employees and their families. TEGNA offers two medical plan options for full and part-time employees through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, as well as access to dental and eye care coverage; fertility, surrogacy and adoption assistance; disability and life insurance.

Our 401(k) program offers full, part-time and temporary employees the opportunity to contribute 1% - 80% of their pay on a pre-tax basis to TEGNA’s 401(k). Contributions made up to the first 4% of pay are eligible for a 100% match from the company and are 100% vested from day one.

Regardless of participation in TEGNA medical plans, ALL employees and their eligible family members receive nine free virtual doctor’s appointments with a physician through Teladoc, and 12 free annual therapy sessions with a licensed clinician through Spring Health.

TEGNA offers a generous Paid Time Off (PTO) benefit as well as nine paid holidays per year. 

* Some jobs are covered by a collective bargaining agreement and thus some or all of the benefits described herein may not apply. For example, some newsroom bargaining unit employees receive health and retirement benefits under plans administered by the union.

EEO statement:

TEGNA Inc. is a proud equal opportunity employer. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, hiring and developing individuals from diverse backgrounds and experiences to add to our collaborative culture. We value and consider applications from all qualified candidates without regard to actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, disability, medical condition, enrollment in college or vocational school, political affiliation, military or veteran status, citizenship status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law. TEGNA will reasonably accommodate qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with applicable law. If you are in need of an accommodation in order to submit your application, please email askhr@tegna.com 

Recruiting Fraud Alert:

To all candidates: your personal information and online safety are important to us. Only TEGNA Recruiters or Hiring Managers will reach out to you regarding consideration of your application or background.  Communications with TEGNA employees will either come from a TEGNA email address with a domain of tegna.com or one of our affiliate station domains.  

Recruiters or Hiring Managers will never request payments, ask for financial account information or sensitive information such as social security numbers. 

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