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EdTech, E-learning, SaaS

Director, Data Platform & Analytics

United StatesRemoteFull TimeDirector$173,000–$200,000 /yrPosted 2 months agoVisa sponsorship available

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Role summary

Newsela is seeking a Director, Data Platform & Analytics to lead the architecture and strategy for their data platform, including data engineering, warehousing, analytics, and self-serve capabilities. This role involves scaling and mentoring a high-performing team, partnering with executives to drive business strategy, and empowering cross-functional teams with data insights. The ideal candidate will have 10+ years of data experience, including 2+ years of team leadership, with hands-on expertise in BigQuery, GCP, SQL, Python, dbt, Dagster, Tableau, Heap, and Pendo. They will be responsible for defining and enforcing data quality, governance, and catalog practices from the ground up. This is a fully remote, full-time position.

Why You'll Love This Role:

As a strategic leader within the Technology team, you will define and drive the architecture of our data platform — encompassing data engineering, warehousing, analytics, and self-serve capabilities for internal and external stakeholders. You will be the connective tissue between technical complexity and meaningful decisions, setting the standards for data quality, governance, and access while empowering cross-functional partners across Product, Marketing, and Customer Success with the tools and insights to act decisively. By building the infrastructure and the culture that turns data into a genuine competitive advantage, you will directly shape how our educational platform evolves and how students and teachers engage with it.

What You'll Be Doing:

  • Own and drive the data and analytics strategy, roadmap, and execution across the organization.
  • Scale and mentor a high-performing team spanning data engineering, analytics, and platform.
  • Partner with the executive team and cross-functional leaders to surface insights that inform business strategy and drive user growth and retention.
  • Empower cross-functional partners across Product, Marketing, and Customer Success with the tools, frameworks, and self-serve access to make data-informed decisions confidently.
  • Architect and evolve a scalable data platform — encompassing pipelines, warehouse infrastructure, and self-serve capabilities — for both internal and external users.
  • Own the data catalog, ensuring data assets are well-documented, discoverable, and understood across the organization.
  • Define and enforce data quality standards, monitoring, and remediation processes to ensure trustworthy data at every layer.
  • Establish and maintain a data governance framework covering ownership, access controls, and data definitions across the organization.
  • Own the BI environment in Tableau and self-serve analytics tool with Heap and Pendo, ensuring accurate reporting and broad data availability.

    • About You:

  • Have 10+ years of data experience, including 2+ years leading teams spanning data engineering, analytics, warehousing, and business intelligence.
  • Are hands-on as well as strategic — comfortable jumping into the details to unblock your team and drive projects forward.
  • Are an exceptional mentor who thrives on developing talent and elevating the people around you.
  • Have a strong ability to translate complex data into clear, actionable insights for both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Are experienced working with diverse stakeholder groups and can facilitate productive conversations that drive alignment and shared goals.
  • Have a proven track record of building and owning data governance frameworks, data quality standards, and data catalog practices from the ground up — and can drive adoption across an organization.
  • Have direct experience with BigQuery and GCP as your core data warehouse and cloud platform.
  • Are proficient in SQL and Python, and can write, review, and uplift others' code.
  • Have hands-on experience with modern data stack tools including dbt for transformation and Dagster for orchestration.
  • Are experienced with Tableau for enterprise BI and self-serve reporting.
  • Have experience with product and web analytics platforms such as Heap and/or Pendo.
  • Legally authorized to work in the US.

    • All offers of employment are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check as part of our pre-employment process.

    Why you’ll love working at Newsela:

  • Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts. Additional benefits such as pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul.
  • Work From Home: We are a fully remote company. We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
  • Supporting ALL Families: Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more!
  • Financial Wellbeing: Invest in your future with our 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
  • Time Off: Flexible PTO plus 10 company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st).
  • Professional Development: Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
  • Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.

    • About Newsela:

    Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, Newsela’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.

    #LI-Remote

    Final compensation will be determined based on the candidate’s individual skills, qualifications, and experience. Total compensation for this role also includes incentive stock options and benefits.

    Base Compensation Range
    $173,000—$200,000 USD

    Sample Newsela interview questions

    • 1

      Design a real-time analytics engine for large datasets.

      system designmedium
    • 2

      Design a real-time chat application.

      system designmedium
    • 3

      Vertical Order Traversal Perform a vertical order traversal of a binary tree. Input: root = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] Output: [[4],[2],[1,5,6],[3],[7]] Explanation: Traverses the tree maintaining column indices, seamlessly grouping nodes that share the exact same vertical alignment.

      codingmedium
    • 4

      Merge Overlapping Intervals Merge overlapping intervals in an array. Input: intervals = [[1,4],[4,5]] Output: [[1,5]] Explanation: The intervals touch exactly at the 4 mark, so they are successfully merged into a single continuous interval.

      codingmedium
    • 5

      Dot Product of Two Sparse Vectors Calculate the dot product of two sparse vectors. Input: nums1 = [0,1,0,0,2], nums2 = [0,0,0,0,5] Output: 10 Explanation: Multiplies the aligned non-zero values (2 * 5) and ignores all the zeros, yielding a dot product of 10.

      codingmedium

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