VP of Data and AI

A Day in the Life of a VP of Data and AI

• Define and drive the long-term roadmap for our data ecosystem, covering ingestion, modeling, governance, observability, and BI.
• Own and evolve our existing Debezium-based CDC infrastructure, ensuring reliability, scalability, and strong schema-change handling.
• Oversee ingestion from SQL Server and cloud storage; extend ingestion to additional data sources and third-party systems.
• Build and lead a best-in-class team across Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, and future Data Science/ML Engineering.
• Partner with Risk to deliver reproducible training-ready datasets—feature sets, label pipelines, temporal models, monitoring tables.
• Architect data foundations that support ML and AI workloads, including feature pipelines, embedding/vector layers, and model governance.
• Establish and enforce data governance: semantic consistency, naming conventions, data contracts, PII handling, lineage, and access controls.
• Drive performance and cost optimization across Snowflake, transformations, ingestion workflows, and BI workloads.
• Ensure the BI layer is reliable, governed, and trustable, with well-modeled marts and consistent metrics.
• Set technical standards, mentor team members, and create a culture of high-quality, testable, maintainable data work. 

Requirements

• 10+ years across data engineering, analytics engineering, ML infrastructure, or related fields; 3–5+ years in leadership.
• Proven experience scaling Snowflake and DBT in production.
• Strong background with SQL Server ingestion patterns, cloud-storage pipelines, and SaaS data integrations.

**This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship. All applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the US.

Competitive Base Salary- $220,000 -$260,000 based on experience

Reports to: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Location: Remote

 The Benefits of Working for Fora Financial:

• Attractive company subsidized Medical, Dental and Vision plans with leading insurance providers
• 401K Plan with Company Match
• Life Insurance at No Cost to Employees
• Generous Time Off Plan Including Rollover Vacation Days
• Commuter Benefits
• Health Care and Dependent Care Flexible Spending
• Weekly breakfast, snacks and Friday lunches provided onsite
• Remote working model

About Fora Financial 

Fora Financial is a technology-enabled leading provider of flexible financing to small and medium sized businesses. Since our inception in 2008, we have supported more than 55,000 merchants nationwide with over $4 billion of capital used for a variety of purposes, from funding everyday operating expenses to managing cash flow gaps to facilitating business expansion, and much more. Leveraging our proprietary technology, Fora Financial is able to deliver capital to our customers via a streamlined and simple process that can be completed in as little as 24 hours, compared with the weeks or even months it often takes for a business to receive a bank loan. 

Over the past seventeen years, Fora Financial has grown from two founders in a small Manhattan workspace to a company of nearly 200 employees. Fora Financial prides itself on being a partner-centric organization, offering a customized funding approach, collaborating with our small-business customers to understand their needs in a dynamic and ever-changing economic environment. 

While we work very hard, we do not take ourselves too seriously. We enjoy a family-like camaraderie that fosters a passion for success in each Fora Financial Team member. 

Equal Opportunity Statement 

Fora Financial is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, or any other legally protected status under local, state, or federal law. Fora Financial provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you need assistance or accommodations due to a disability during the application process, please contact [email protected].