Head of Engineering, Data Platform

About the role

This position represents a builder's first opportunity to own the data platform end-to-end at Clover Health. You will set the technical strategy and personally write the code that validates and proves that strategy in production. The role requires partnering daily with a small, focused, and highly engaged team of engineers under the direct leadership of the Corporate CTO. You must bring a definitive point of view on modern data architecture while maintaining a deep love for the craft of software engineering. The ideal candidate will provide both the strategic vision and the hands-on leadership necessary to develop the team around this critical platform.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Assume end-to-end ownership of the data platform architecture, tooling selection, and execution roadmap with a bias toward enabling broad, self-serve data access across the entire business.
• Remain hands-on with Snowflake and DBT, contributing directly to builds, migrations, and optimizations alongside the engineering team rather than operating solely at a management level.
• Lead the integration and rationalization of a complex ecosystem of source systems and third-party vendors into a single, cohesive, and reliable data warehouse infrastructure.
• Define and evolve the company's data modeling standards, establishing well-reasoned opinions on the structure of mart and gold layers and determining when to enforce strict structure versus when to allow flexibility.
• Make informed strategic build-versus-buy decisions regarding tooling and vendor relationships, framing choices based on business and operational outcomes instead of purely technical elegance.
• Architect and evolve a data platform specifically designed for an AI-native organization, creating pipelines that effectively serve LLM applications and infrastructure that supports agentic workflows.
• Leverage AI actively within your own workflow and develop strong opinions regarding where AI genuinely enhances the data platform and where it does not add value.
• Stay ahead of emerging AI trends reshaping the data team landscape and translate those insights into concrete staffing decisions and platform capabilities.
• Frame every platform initiative in terms of concrete business outcomes, emphasizing operational efficiency, financial impact, and clinical results as the platform serves a strategic enabler role.
• Partner closely with business stakeholders to translate data requirements into platform capabilities while avoiding the creation of unnecessary friction or access barriers for users.
• Ensure that progress and critical tradeoffs remain visible to leadership as a natural byproduct of your working methodology and decision-making process.
• Lead and develop a small high-impact engineering team by establishing a high bar for craft, communication, and individual ownership.
• Deliberately assess team composition by identifying existing skills, determining future gaps, and sequencing hiring to align with the platform roadmap.
• Invest in the professional growth of team members by providing clear feedback, creating opportunities for ownership, and developing individuals who can grow alongside the evolving platform.

Requirements

• Possess an engineering background with deep, hands-on experience in Snowflake and DBT.
• Demonstrate proven experience navigating genuinely complex data environments characterized by heterogeneous source systems, messy integrations, inconsistent data models, and real business logic embedded within pipelines; the complexity of your previous work matters far more than sheer volume or scale.
• Bring a cross-domain background as a significant asset; experience building complex data platforms across varied business contexts is valuable.
• Have experience in regulated domains such as healthcare or financial services, which is helpful but not strictly required.
• Show a strong track record of building data platforms that enable business stakeholders to derive insights and make decisions with minimal friction.
• Exhibit the ability to balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery in fast-paced, startup-like environments.
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, translating complex concepts into actionable understanding.
• Operate with a high degree of ownership and comfort making decisions in ambiguous situations where established processes may not yet exist.

Nice to have

• Experience contributing to open-source data projects or platforms.
• Background in building or operating platforms within highly regulated industries.

Practical notes

This role is remote within the United States. No additional information regarding hours, travel, visa requirements, or application deadlines was provided in the source material.