VP, Senior Data Engineering Manager (L14)

Job Description:

Role Title: VP, Senior Data Engineering Manager (L14)

Company Overview: Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) is a leading consumer financing company that has been at the heart of American commerce and opportunity for nearly a century. Synchrony delivers credit and banking products that empower tens of millions of consumers to improve their financial lives and access what matters most. Leveraging innovative solutions that are shaping the future of retail commerce, Synchrony supports the growth and success of some of the nation’s most respected brands, alongside hundreds of thousands of small and midsize businesses, including health and wellness providers. Committed to excellence in service and culture, Synchrony is proud to be named as #3 as a Great Place to Work® in India and is honored to be ranked the #1 Best Company to Work For® in the U.S. by Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work®. For more information, visit www.synchrony.com.

Organizational Overview:

The Data & Analytics Engineering organization designs and delivers high-quality data and analytic products that support Synchrony’s operational and analytic capabilities. The team enables Synchrony’s data strategy by building modern, scalable and secure data pipelines, best-in-class data models, and reusable data products in partnership with business, technology, risk, governance, architecture, and product teams.  They drive business value, operational excellence, regulatory readiness, and enhanced customer experiences.

Role Summary/Purpose:

The VP, Senior Data Engineering Manager will lead a high-performing data engineering organization responsible for designing, building, and scaling enterprise data pipelines, and products that enable strategic AI & advanced analytics, business intelligence, machine learning, and data-driven decision-making. This leader will partner closely with technology, product, analytics, risk, operations, and business teams to deliver reliable, secure, and scalable data solutions aligned to strategic business objectives.  This role will be responsible for supporting Synchrony’s cloud data migration journey by leading the modernization and migration of our data assets and pipelines and products to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performing cloud-based solutions. As a Synchrony people leader, you will coach and develop talent within a diverse, inclusive, and matrixed organization, helping individuals grow their careers, deepen their technical and leadership capabilities, and contribute to Synchrony’s continued success.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technical leader with strong experience in modern data engineering practices, best-in-class data modeling, cloud platforms & data architecture, governance, and people leadership. They will be responsible for setting the technical direction, driving engineering excellence, managing delivery, developing talent, and ensuring data solutions meet high standards for quality, performance, security, compliance, and the creation of exceptional customer experiences. The ideal candidate will have a solid and established track record of multi-year cloud data transformation and migration execution experience, partnering with business & technology stakeholders to guide the delivery of agile, cost-effective, and high-performance cloud data solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide vision, leadership, and strategic direction for data engineers to deliver modern, high-quality data pipelines, models, and products, while fostering innovation and new approaches to solving enterprise technical challenges.

• Lead cloud data transformation and migration initiatives, helping define target-state cloud data engineering standards while ensuring solutions are resilient, scalable, high-performing, cost-optimized, and secure.

• Drive data engineering excellence through AI adoption, automation, reusable frameworks, pipeline standardization, testing automation, and continuous improvement to reduce complexity, increase consistency, and accelerate delivery.

• Establish and advance best practices for data ingestion, transformation, standardization, productization, data quality, metadata management, lineage, observability, orchestration, automated deployment, data protection, and secure data consumption.

• Oversee the development of best-in-class data models and testing practices that are aligned to business objectives and enable trusted, consistent, secure, and easily usable data across the enterprise.

• Partner with Synchrony leaders, the Data Office, Supervisory Affairs, Risk & Compliance, other process owners, and other Technology and Business stakeholders to ensure strategic data solutions sufficiently mitigate risk, strengthen controls, and respond to regulatory expectations.

• Champion agile delivery with the Office of Agile and cross-functional teams using SAFe methods, managing execution across multiple priorities, projects, and release trains while proactively addressing dependencies, risks, and issues.

• Develop, coach, and retain a high-performing team through skill development, career growth, inclusive leadership, succession planning, and ongoing focus on team effectiveness.

• Perform other duties and/or special projects as assigned.

Required Skills/Knowledge:

• Bachelor's Degree and a minimum of 12 years of IT experience, OR in lieu of a Degree minimum of 14 years of experience in an IT environment

• Minimum of 5 years of data engineering experience leveraging public cloud capabilities.

• Minimum of 7 years of experience in a large complex organization 

• Minimum of 9 years of Demonstrated experience leading data engineering delivery for enterprise-scale data platforms, pipelines, data models, or analytic products.

• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to business, technology, risk, and executive stakeholders.

Desired Skills/Knowledge:

• Experience building consumer-focused data pipelines and products with clear ownership, service-level expectations, documentation, data contracts, discoverability, quality controls, and support for analytics, reporting, regulatory, operational, AI/ML, and application use cases.

• Demonstrated experience in successful cloud transformation and data application migration leveraging AWS public cloud services; familiarity with AWS, Redshift, Snowflake, Kafka, Hadoop, Oracle, AbInitio, Spark, Python, Sagemaker Studio and SAS preferred.

• Experience leading high-visibility, complex technology programs and functional teams, providing vision, leadership, and strategy aligned to business goals, customer experience, and financial outcomes.

• Strong technical thought leadership with the ability to identify emerging technology opportunities, solve complex problems, and drive meaningful internal and external customer experiences.

• In-depth knowledge of agile software development methodologies, testing practices, engineering lifecycle, and delivery execution.

• Demonstrated ability to independently lead concepts and ideas, propose creative solutions to time-critical problems, and manage multiple projects and deadlines.

• Ability to assess technical issues, understand business impact, recommend risk mitigation strategies, and support responses to regulatory requests.

• Experience in financial services, banking, credit, payments, or another highly regulated industry preferred

Eligibility Criteria:

Bachelor's Degree and a minimum of 12 years of IT experience, OR in lieu of a Degree minimum of 14 years of experience in an IT environment

Work Timings:

(Need to be flexible with an overlap between EST and IST hours)

This role qualifies for Enhanced Flexibility and Choice offered in Synchrony India and will require the incumbent to be available between 06:00 AM Eastern Time – 11:30 AM Eastern Time (timings are anchored to US Eastern hours and will adjust twice a year locally). This window is for meetings with India and US teams. The remaining hours will be flexible for the employee to choose. Exceptions may apply periodically due to business needs. Please discuss this with the hiring manager for more details

For Internal Applicants:

• Understand the criteria or mandatory skills required for the role, before applying

• Inform your manager and HRM before applying for any role on Workday

• Ensure that your professional profile is updated (fields such as education, prior experience, other skills) and it is mandatory to upload your updated resume (Word or PDF format)

• Must not be any corrective action plan (First Formal/Final Formal, LPP)

• L13+ Employees who have completed 18 months in the organization and 12 months in current role and level are only eligible.

• L13+ Employees can apply

Level / Grade : 14

Job Family Group:

Information Technology