Life360

Director, Data Engineering (AI Native)

Remote, USA; Remote, Canada · Director

Sponsorship not specified$216k-$318kDetected 26 days ago

BigQuerySnowflakeDatabricksCI/CDPlatform EngineeringMachine LearningdbtData EngineeringData ScienceA/B TestingStakeholder ManagementLeadership

About the role

The Data and Analytics (DnA) organization is the backbone of how Life360 understands its members, measures what matters, and makes better decisions.
Our work ensures that every team at Life360 has reliable, well-modeled data and the tools to act on it.
This role requires someone who is technically credible across both data platform engineering and analytics engineering-not just one or the other.

Responsibilities

Own the analytics engineering strategy end-to-end: dbt project structure, data modeling standards (dimensional, OBT, and semantic layer), testing and documentation practices, and the development workflow that analytics engineers use daily.
Drive toward a self-serve data experience where analysts and data scientists can answer their own questions without engineering bottlenecks-this is the outcome that ties platform and analytics engineering together.
Make strategic build vs. buy decisions across the data stack and manage vendor relationships (Snowflake, Databricks, Amplitude, and related tooling).
Drive data quality, governance, and documentation standards that make data trustworthy and self-service across the company.
Bring an AI native approach to data engineering: leverage AI tools to accelerate development cycles, evaluate AI-powered data quality and anomaly detection solutions, and ensure our data infrastructure supports ML/AI workloads and experimentation at scale.
Lead and develop three engineering managers and their teams, setting clear expectations, running effective org-level planning, and building a high-performance culture.
Coach and grow your managers as leaders-not just executors. Invest in their ability to hire, develop talent, run retrospectives, and make tradeoffs independently.
Own workforce planning, headcount allocation, and hiring strategy across all three teams. Run calibrations and drive promotion decisions.
Build a cohesive engineering org from three distinct functional teams, establishing shared standards while respecting each team's unique domain expertise.
Experience building or managing ads data infrastructure or ad-tech data pipelines.

Requirements

8-10+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or data platform roles at technology companies, with at least 5 years in people management.
3+ years managing managers
Strong experience with dbt (data build tool): project structure, testing frameworks, documentation standards, CI/CD for data transformations, and how to scale dbt across multiple teams and domains.
Ability to distill technical complexity into language that non-technical stakeholders can understand and act on.
Proven ability to prioritize ruthlessly across competing demands from multiple business units-a skill sharpened by working in fast-paced tech environments.
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
Experience at a consumer mobile, subscription-based, or marketplace technology company.
Hands-on experience with our specific stack: Databricks, Amplitude, Statsig, dbt.
Experience with real-time data streaming and event-driven architectures at scale.
Track record of implementing AI/ML-powered approaches to data quality, pipeline optimization, or infrastructure automation.

Compensation

For candidates based in the US, the salary range for this position is $216,000 to $318,000 USD.

Benefits

Competitive pay and benefits.
Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance plans (100% p
The compensation package includes a wide range of medical, dental, vision, financial, and other benefits, as well as equity.
Set the architectural vision for how data is ingested, transformed, modeled, and served at Life360.

Company info

We own the data platform, analytics engineering, data science, and analytics functions that power insights for every operating group across the company.
We're a team that values clarity, directness, and building things that work.
About the Job
We're looking for a Director of Data Engineering to lead the engineering half of our Data and Analytics organization.
This is a senior leadership role where you'll own the data from end to end; from the source to consumption by humans and LLMs.
You will manage a strong team of data & analytics engineers and managers and the strategic direction of our data, collaborating closely with leaders on data science, engineering, product analytics, and marketing analytics.
You need to be able to evaluate Databricks architecture decisions, understand how data flows through instrumentation SDKs and event collection pipelines, and challenge your managers' technical proposals on pipeline design just as readily as you can assess dbt project structure, data modeling standards, and semantic layer strategy.
You won't be writing code day-to-day, but you'll need enough depth to set technical direction, spot when something is off, and earn the trust of strong engineers.
Data engineering at Life360 is a strategic partner, not a service org.
You'll be embedded in product and business decisions-shaping roadmaps, pushing back when data needs aren't accounted for, and designing systems for needs that haven't been articulated yet.
Your primary impact will come from how you lead people, align teams to business priorities, translate technical complexity into language the business can act on, and represent data engineering at the leadership table.

Apply directly at Life360 →Create a free account for alerts like this View Life360 immigration profile

This listing is sourced directly from Life360's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.