The Role

As the Head of Data & Engineering, you will take full ownership of solution architecture, client delivery, distributed team leadership, and internal AI process strategy. This role requires both strategic vision and hands-on execution—you’ll be comfortable reading and writing code, not just reviewing presentations.

You will manage complex client engagements from start to finish, lead a distributed team across multiple countries, and define how AI is integrated into delivery workflows. The ideal candidate is a builder at heart: someone who has designed and implemented tracking plans, data pipelines, CDPs, and automation workflows, using that experience to make strong architectural decisions and step in wherever the team needs support.

Schedule:

• Flexible during client business hours: Sydney, AU

Independent Contractor Perks

• Permanent work from home
• Immediate hiring
• Health Insurance Coverage for eligible locations

Key Responsibilities

Client Engagement & Delivery

• Own client relationships end-to-end: scoping, kickoff, QA, delivery, and ongoing advisory.
• Translate client business problems into well-scoped, well-architected solutions; stay close enough to catch issues before they escalate.
• Lead technical pre-sales: scope work &  contribute to proposals

Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Set reference architectures covering ingestion, warehousing, transformation, and activation.
• Own standards for event tracking, CDP schema design, attribution modelling, and BI layers; be able to dive into queries and pipelines directly.
• Make build vs buy decisions; keep our client at the technical frontier, especially around AI-augmented workflows.

Team Leadership & Coaching

• Lead and develop a distributed team: Philippines (2x Engineers), Greece (1x MarOps, part-time), Spain (1x Webflow, part-time), Australia (1x Data Engineer, contract).
• Run structured feedback loops; develop specialists into well-rounded technical consultants.
• Orchestrate AI agents and automation tooling across delivery workflows to augment the squad; define how the team works with AI, not just whether they use it.

AI & Process Strategy

• Drive our client's internal AI strategy from a process and delivery perspective.
• Mandate AI-first working: if a process can use AI, it must use AI.
• Build reusable frameworks, templates, and playbooks that outlast individual engagements.

Internal Operations

• Own the data and engineering layer of the internal tooling and reporting infrastructure.
• Proactively improve systems for version control, QA, incident response, and knowledge management.

Ways of Working

Our client has nine performance standards that apply to everyone. For this role:

• Fast Lift Off: Deliver value in week one; map the problem, levers, and plan quickly.
• Learns Fast & Compounds: Take feedback immediately, don't repeat mistakes, build reusable frameworks.
• Judgement & Proactive Escalation: Escalate early with options; no late surprises.
• High Quality Execution: Clean outputs, strong prioritisation; connect work to commercial impact.
• High Velocity: Ship, learn, iterate; move fast without being reckless.
• Stakeholder Management: Align early and often; build trust through clarity.
• Comfortable in Ambiguity: Create structure from chaos; move with imperfect information.
• Safe Set of Hands: Predictable delivery, on time, at quality.
• Leave Streams Better: Codify learnings; create process and documentation that outlast you.

Qualifications & Experience

Required

• 10+ years in data or analytics engineering, including 3+ years in a Director, or head-of-function role.
• Hands-on experience as lead architect for modern data platforms: CDPs, data warehouses, ETL/ELT pipelines, attribution models.
• Strong SQL and Python; cloud data warehouses, dbt (or equivalent), event tracking platforms.
• Hands-on CDP and customer engagement tool experience (e.g. Segment, Customer.io, Klaviyo, HubSpot, Braze).
• Demonstrated ability to manage clients commercially: proposals, scoping, stakeholder management.
• Track record building distributed technical teams in a multi-client or consultancy environment.
• Genuine AI-first mindset: active user of AI tooling in daily work.

Preferred

• Experience with automation platforms (e.g. n8n, Make) and orchestrating AI agents.
• Background in growth, marketing technology, or RevOps.
• PE-backed or high-growth scale-up environment experience.

Working Conditions

• Full-time, permanent. Fully remote, no location requirement.
• Distributed team across Philippines, Greece, Spain, and Australia (AEST, PHT, EET, CET).
• Occasional travel to client sites and client's events in Australia and overseas.

Compensation

• Competitive base salary benchmarked to your local VP-level market rate.
• Annual performance bonus of 15-20% of base, tied to delivery outcomes, team development, and AI/process initiatives.
• Learning and technology allowance included.
• HMO after 90 days
• Paid Time off and Holidays after 90 days

Side Note

• This is a permanent work-from-home role under an Independent Contractor arrangement. Candidates must have their own computer and reliable internet connection, and are responsible for their own taxes and benefits. Professional hourly fees are established based on your performance in the application process.

Reminder

• Please follow the provided link to BruntWork’s Career Site to finish your initial application requirements, including the assessment questions, technical check, and voice recording. Submissions with all requirements fulfilled will receive priority review.