Director of Data

The Company: Meridian Softworks ’s mission is to inspire kids to love learning. In our fast-changing world, the traditional educational system struggles to meet the diverse and evolving needs of young learners. Meridian Softworks reimagines this system, offering flexible and engaging learning experiences as a supplement and alternative to traditional education. By connecting learners with a global community of teachers and peers through our online platform, we make learning personal, dynamic, and deeply human. We've made significant strides since launching our marketplace of live online classes in 2017. Finding initial success with secular homeschoolers, we then expanded to enrichment learning to meet the needs of a wider audience, growing our business 16x since 2019. Post-pandemic, we have evolved our platform to power academic learning, incorporated AI, and have begun to grow our international community. We're proud to have served over 1.5M passionate learners with more than $100M in annual bookings. Driving disruptive, positive change in education is rewarding and hard. Meridian Softworks team members are encouraged to challenge themselves, take risks, and grow in their careers. We look for talented people whose sense of urgency, innate curiosity, and determination to drive impact will help Meridian Softworks achieve outsized results in pursuit of our mission. We invite you to be part of an ambitious team dedicated to ensuring every learner can navigate the future with curiosity, resilience, and a love of learning. The Role We’re hiring a Director of Data to lead Meridian Softworks ’s Data team that is responsible for both developing infrastructure, pipelines, and tools to power Meridian Softworks ’s data needs, as well as providing analytics and insights to steer the company toward high-quality, data-informed decisions. This is a critical leadership role that combines data strategy, people leadership, and strong hands-on technical contribution. The ideal candidate will shape Meridian Softworks ’s data foundations, improve self-serve analytics tools and resources, and build applied AI / ML capabilities while working across the business to find new ways to create impact with data. Core Responsibilities: Lead, mentor, and grow a small but mighty data team while remaining hands-on with data architecture, modeling, technical direction, and analytics Contribute directly as an individual contributor, particularly in data engineering, data infrastructure, and analytics engineering, helping establish high standards for data quality, reliability, and usability Lead data strategy and execution across Meridian Softworks ’s core data systems, including Redshift, dbt, and Opensearch, and self-serve tools such as Omni, Amplitude, and Statsig Partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Marketing, Operations, Finance, and other teams to deliver trusted, decision-ready data resources and analytics Collaborate with senior leadership to align on strategy, priorities, metrics, experimentation practices, and long-term roadmap planning Foster a culture of data quality, ownership, documentation, self-service, experimentation, and continuous improvement through mentorship and feedback Lead adoption of self-serve data practices across the organization, ensuring teams can access and use data effectively without requiring significant centralized support Help define and implement modern data practices that improve speed, trust, discoverability, and leverage across analytics, experimentation, and applied AI / ML Desired Experience & Skills: 10+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, analytics, data science, ML, software engineering, or related technical roles 5+ years of management experience leading data, analytics, engineering, or ML teams, with demonstrated proficiency in performance management, career development, and people logistics Strong experience with modern data infrastructure and analytics engineering, including SQL, dbt, data modeling, pipeline reliability, and warehouse architecture, as well building as self-serve analytics systems and practices using tools such as Omni, Looker, Amplitude, Statsig, Mode, Hex, or similar platforms Experience with deep analytics / data science, including influencing stakeholders with data-informed decisions and strategies Experience balancing data leadership responsibilities with hands-on technical contribution, especially in data engineering, data infrastructure, or analytics engineering Proven ability to lead multiple complex data initiatives from planning through execution and adoption Deep experience leveraging experimentation, A/B testing, analytics, and metrics to inform decisions Ability to align data strategy and execution with broader business, product, and engineering priorities Ability to guide ML Engineering work in areas such as search, recommendations, personalization, or applied automation, even if not personally the deepest ML practitioner Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills across tech