Head of Data Engineering, Corporate & Enterprise
Guardian Life
- Location
- Holmdel
- Work model
- On-Site
- Level
- Staff
- Posted
- Aug 14, 2026
Skills
About this role
Position
Overview: The Head of Data Engineering, Corp & Enterprise is a mid- leadership role accountable for the end-to-end data engineering lifecycle across Guardian's Corporate and business unit and Enterprise, from source data acquisition, ingestion, and transformation through the delivery of trusted, production-ready data products that power AI, machine learning, reporting, analytics, and business applications. This leader owns the strategy, architecture direction, engineering execution, and operational health of the data supply chain that downstream teams depend on every day. This is a player-coach role. The Head of Data Engineering leads a team of US FTEs and provides direction to an extended indirect engineering team in India, building a high-performing, globally distributed delivery model with clear standards, strong engineering discipline, and a culture of ownership. While the role is primarily a leadership position, the leader is expected to stay technically current and go hands-on when needed reviewing designs, unblocking complex engineering problems, and setting the bar for quality through example. A core mandate of this role is ownership and maturing Guardian's Master Data Management (MDM) practice. The leader will manage MDM operations and evolve the practice from foundational capability to enterprise-grade discipline - strengthening match and merge rules, survivorship, golden record quality, data stewardship workflows, and domain expansion. Deep, practical knowledge of Reltio is essential, including its data model, match engine, workflows, integrations, and APIs. Equally important, this leader carries a transformation mandate: to take data engineering to its next level using AI agents and agentic AI. This means reimagining how pipelines are built, tested, monitored , and healed : embedding AI-assisted development, autonomous data quality and observability agents, and agentic workflows across the engineering lifecycle to dramatically increase speed, reliability, and scale. The right candidate sees agentic AI not as a tool to adopt, but as a new operating model for data engineering and has the vision and pragmatism to lead the organization and the new operating model .
Key Responsibilities
Own end-to-end data engineering for the Corporate business units and Enterprise - source data acquisition, ingestion, integration, transformation, curation, and publication of production-ready data products for AI, ML, reporting, analytics, and application consumption Define and execute the data engineering strategy and multi-year roadmap, aligned to business unit priorities and Guardian's enterprise data and AI strategy Lead, coach, and develop a team of FTE data engineers; provide direction, standards, and delivery oversight to an indirect engineering team in India, operating a seamless follow-the-sun global delivery model Operate as a player-coach , remain hands-on as needed with solution design, code and pipeline reviews, complex troubleshooting, and critical delivery moments Own and manage the MDM platform and operations on Reltio, including data modeling, match/merge rules, survivorship, workflows, integrations, and API-based consumption Mature the MDM practice into an enterprise-grade discipline , improve golden record quality, expand mastered domains, strengthen data stewardship and governance workflows, and measure and communicate MDM business value Lead the transformation of data engineering using agentic AI , deploy AI agents for pipeline development, code generation, testing, documentation, data quality monitoring, anomaly detection, and self-healing operations Champion AI-assisted engineering practices across the team, redefining team workflows, productivity expectations, and engineering roles for an agentic future Deliver governed, discoverable, reusable data