We are seeking a seasoned leader to scale our centralized function for onboarding and operationalizing third-party data across the firm. This is a senior leadership role for someone who has operated at the intersection of data engineering and financial services where data ingestion, reliability, and operational rigor are mission critical.
You will inherit a growing team and be accountable for transforming operational complexity into disciplined, repeatable, scalable process. You will help modernize and scale this function in partnership with engineering, using automation and AI where they add real value. We are not seeking an AI expert or a software engineer, but a seasoned practitioner who can drive the operating model from experience and a strong product mindset.
Key Responsibilities
Platform Operations & Service Reliability
- Own end-to-end operational accountability for the Data Platform, including 24×7 monitoring, alerting, and incident response.
- Define, govern, and continuously improve SLAs, SLOs, and KPIs for platform performance and data availability.
- Drive operational excellence through rigorous process design — SOPs, runbooks, escalation paths, and knowledge repositories that reduce dependency on tribal knowledge.
- Support audits, compliance reviews, and data governance initiatives in partnership with legal, risk, and compliance teams.
- Own the end-to-end onboarding lifecycle for new datasets and data pipelines.
- Develop and enforce standardized onboarding frameworks, checklists, and acceptance criteria across asset classes.
- Ensure all onboarded data meets security, governance, and quality standards.
Incident & Problem Management
- Lead triage and resolution of data platform incidents, driving rapid response and clear stakeholder communication.
- Own post-incident reviews, root cause analysis (RCA), and long-term remediation tracking.
- Partner with platform engineering to systematically eliminate recurring failure modes.
- Track and improve key operational metrics including MTTR, incident frequency, and problem resolution rate.
Stakeholder Experience
- Serve as the senior leader accountable for ensuring data is scalable, usable, and reliable for all data consumers across the firm — PMs, quant researchers, traders, and technology teams.
- Own user-facing service forums, escalations, and operational reviews.
- Ensure proactive, transparent communication during incidents, planned maintenance, and platform changes.
- Build structured feedback loops to surface pain points, anticipate needs, and drive continuous experience improvements.
Transformation & Scalability
- Define and drive a modern operating model for the function, using engineering partnerships, automation, and AI to reduce manual effort, improve quality, and scale onboarding and support.
- Identify opportunities to automate, streamline, and modernize operational workflows — reducing manual toil and improving throughput.
- Champion AI and automation initiatives that enhance operational scalability, observability, and resilience.
- Partner with engineering and product teams to embed operational requirements early in the development lifecycle.
- Lead a team responsible for centralized onboarding, data lifecycle management, and operational enablement, driving performance, development, and a culture of disciplined execution.
- Set a high bar for accountability, process discipline, and client focus.
- Provide coaching, performance management, and career development for team members.
- Build a culture where operational complexity is proactively dissolved into clear, auditable, repeatable process.
What We’re Looking For
Experience
- 6+ years in data operations, technology operations, or platform operations roles within financial services — investment banks, asset managers, hedge funds, or large data vendors serving the financial industry.
- Demonstrated experience leading data onboarding, data management, or platform-facing operational teams — not just contributing to them. You have built processes that scale and have a proven track record of a successful partnership with data engineering functions.
- Deep familiarity with data ingestion, pipeline operations, and data platform management in a high-volume, low-latency financial context.
- Experience managing multi-asset class data (equities, commodities, or fixed income) is strongly preferred.
- Exceptional track record of taking operational complexity and translating it into rigid, auditable, scalable process.
Skills & Knowledge
- Expert level understanding of the complexities and challenges bringing third party data feeds that are consumable, usable, and production ready.
- Strong understanding of modern data platforms: cloud data lakes, warehouses, streaming architectures, and ETL/ELT pipelines.
- Deep expertise with monitoring, observability, and alerting tooling across distributed data systems.
- Solid grounding in Incident, Problem, and Change Management frameworks (ITIL or equivalent).
- Experience with ticketing and service management platforms.
- Excellent stakeholder management — you communicate clearly to both technical teams and senior business stakeholders.
- Ability to operate at both strategic and operational levels: setting direction while ensuring execution quality.
Mindset
- You believe modern data functions should be built with engineering, automation, and AI at the core, not layered on after the fact.
- You are a process builder, not just a problem solver — you design systems that prevent problems from recurring.
- You bring structure to ambiguity and hold teams to high operational standards.
- You are a strong communicator who keeps stakeholders informed proactively, especially under pressure.
- You thrive in fast-paced, high-stakes environments where data reliability directly impacts investment decisions.
Why This Role
- High-visibility leadership role with direct impact on the firm’s core data infrastructure.
- Opportunity to build and scale an operational function from a strong foundation.
- Work at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and institutional finance.
- Competitive compensation, benefits, and a collaborative, intellectually rigorous culture.
- Balyasny Asset Management is an equal opportunity employer
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