Data Engineering Director

Data Engineering Director

📍 Remote (U.S.-based) | 💼 Full-Time | 💰 $140,000.00

Join Courier Newsroom - an organization that drives journalism and empowers communities.

At Courier Newsroom, we’re reinventing local media to inform and empower communities through impactful reporting. Our mission is rooted in civic engagement and equity—and we’re growing fast.

We are presently looking for a Data Engineering Director to build and manage our newsroom's data engineering function.

COURIER Newsroom is committed to building an inclusive workplace that values diverse perspectives and lived experiences. We strongly encourage women, people of color, individuals with disabilities, LGBTQ+ candidates, and those from all backgrounds to apply. As an equal opportunity employer, we strive to break down barriers and ensure every team member feels seen, heard, and supported.

Top Line:

You'll lead a small team of data engineers supporting fast-moving newsrooms and different functions across the organization. This is equal parts technical leadership and individual contribution: architect solutions, write code, and guide your team through the daily chaos of journalism's unpredictable timelines.

Your team's output feeds our data analysts, who in turn support reporters, editors, and newsroom leadership. You'll need to balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery, making architectural decisions that serve both immediate deadlines and long-term maintainability.

What You'll Own:

• Team leadership: Manage and mentor data engineers, set technical direction, remove blockers
• Architecture decisions: Design data systems that scale with newsroom needs while remaining flexible enough to pivot when priorities shift
• Stakeholder partnership: Translate business requirements from reporters, editors, and analysts into technical specifications
• Hands-on engineering: Build and maintain critical pipelines yourself along with the team
• Technical strategy: Balance speed and sustainability in a deadline-driven environment

Technical Requirements:

• Python expertise: Strong command of the language for data ingestion, transformation, and pipeline development
• Data extraction: Proven experience with REST APIs, web scraping, and creative data acquisition
• BigQuery: Optimize table design and query performance at scale
• Dagster+: Design and implement orchestration at the team level
• dbt: Build transformation frameworks that others can extend
• Engineering leadership: Track record of technical mentorship and team management

What We're Looking For:

• You've done this before. You understand that newsrooms don't wait for perfect solutions—they need working ones, delivered yesterday. You can make the call between refactoring legacy code and shipping a quick fix. You communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders without condescension. You build systems that your team can maintain without you.
• Most importantly, you can manage both up and down: setting realistic expectations with leadership while creating space for your engineers to do their best work.

Courier Newsroom offers the following benefits:

• Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO), 11 paid holidays a year
• An Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Full suite of health benefits
• $500 home office reimbursement
• 401k
• Flexible working arrangements

Courier Newsroom is an equal opportunity employer. Women, people of color, those with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ community are strongly urged to apply. Applicants shall not be discriminated against because of race, religion, sex, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, color, marital status, or medical conditions.

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