Head of Solutions Engineering

Join Nextdata and Shape the Future of Data!
Nextdata is on a mission to make data mesh principles a reality at enterprise scale. Founded by Zhamak Dehghani, the creator of the Data Mesh, we're pioneering a data-mesh-native platform—Nextdata OS—that enables developers to share data responsibly through data product containers. We're transforming how data is created, shared, discovered, and used, making it more connected, faster, and fairer than ever before.
We're seeking a visionary leader to spearhead our post-sales engineering efforts at some of the world's largest enterprises. If you're passionate about big data, distributed systems, AI analytics, and ensuring compliance in data operations, this is the opportunity for you!

Your Impact

• Own the Post-Sales Journey: Lead the process from developing Proof of Concepts (PoCs) to deploying Nextdata OS in production environments.
• Collaborate with Stakeholders: Define clear success criteria for PoCs and deployments, addressing technical, business, and compliance challenges.
• Lead and Mentor: Build and guide a team in designing and deploying domain-specific data products and custom analytics/ML applications.
• Ensure Compliance Standards: Oversee compliance requirements, ensuring deployments meet standards like SOC 2, GDPR, and other regulations.
• Demonstrate Data Mesh Power: Showcase how Nextdata OS leverages data mesh principles through live demonstrations, workshops, and proofs of concept.
• Drive Customer Success: Manage stakeholder relationships, prioritize deliverables, and conduct workshops to exceed pilot project expectations.
• Provide Technical Leadership: Offer expert guidance to internal teams and customers, assisting sales teams in answering technical questions.
• Bridge Product and Customer Needs: Collaborate with product and engineering teams to enhance offerings based on customer feedback.
• Form Strategic Relationships: Build strong business and technical relationships within customer organizations to identify new opportunities.
• Share Your Expertise: Contribute to documentation, develop reusable assets like demos and workshops, and represent Nextdata at industry events.
• Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with engineering, professional services, sales teams, and partners to ensure excellent customer experiences.

What We're Looking For

• Extensive Experience: 15+ years in software delivery with a strong track record in deploying early-stage startup products.
• Data Savvy: Strong background in data, AI, and analytics infrastructure. Version of data governance, security, and compliance in data infrastructure.
• Leadership Skills: Proven ability to manage customer-facing teams and deliver complex projects successfully.
• Excellent Communication: Strong presentation, documentation, and problem-solving skills with the ability to articulate complex concepts.
• Customer-Centric Mindset: A positive team player attitude and a strong desire to make our customers successful.
• Stakeholder Management: Expertise in handling customer relationships and addressing their challenges.
• Compliance Expertise: Understanding of compliance requirements (e.g., SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA) and ensuring solutions meet these standards.
• Agile Expertise: Deep understanding of agile software delivery practices.
• Willingness to Travel: Ability to travel as needed to meet with customers and teams.

Technical Requirements

• Experience with deploying technical and developer-facing enterprise cloud products.
• Experience with Python and scripting languages
• Familiarity with infrastructure deployments such as Kubernetes
• Understanding of data storage solutions, compute engines, and data processing frameworks (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Flink).
• Experience with cloud data services like AWS (Redshift, EMR), Azure (Synapse, Databricks), and Google Cloud (BigQuery, Dataflow).
• Familiarity with data integration tools and ETL processes.
• Familiarity with designing and operating medium to large-scale enterprise and cloud infrastructures.

Nice-to-haves

• Data Mesh Familiarity: Hands-on experience with Data Mesh implementations.
• Experience with management, logging, and observability products and solutions.
• Certifications with public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP).

Our Benefits

• We offer a competitive salary and equity, giving you ownership in the company’s future.
• Premium health, vision, and dental insurance coverage for you and your dependents.
• Unlimited paid time off for flexibility and balance.
• $2,000 for your home workspace setup and a company laptop to get started.

About Us
At Nextdata, we believe that decentralization is the key to unlocking the true potential of data. Our flagship product, Nextdata OS, is a data-mesh-native platform designed to tackle the challenges of decentralizing data at enterprise scale. We're pioneering a new way for developers to work with data, enabling them to share it responsibly through data product containers and empowering AI, machine learning, and analytics with decentralized, responsible, and equitable data ownership that transcends organizational, technological, and trust boundaries.
Our vision is to transform the experience of creating, sharing, discovering, and using data by adhering to data mesh principles, making this process more connected, faster, and fairer than ever before. We recognize that the world of data is complex and ever-changing: data models become outdated rapidly; data is owned across different trust boundaries; it's stored on various platforms; used in multiple modes; and data can't protect itself. Previous centralized approaches to data collection, modeling, and governance are not only ineffective but can also be unfair. That's why our technology empowers data developers, users, and owners with a delightful experience, treating data products as first-class primitives with built-in trust—we're reimagining the world of data.