Manager, Data Platform

About This Opportunity

We are representing a leading global travel technology organization in their search for a Manager, Data Platform to join their Berlin engineering team. Our client operates at massive scale, processing billions of search queries and powering metasearch platforms used by travelers worldwide. This is a senior, hands-on leadership role where you will lead the development and evolution of shared data infrastructure that supports analytics, reporting, experimentation, and machine learning across the organization.

You will lead a Berlin-based team of data platform engineers, set technical direction, make key architecture decisions, and personally engage with the most complex platform and reliability challenges. The role requires working from the Berlin office three days per week.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical roadmap for the shared data platform, including ingestion, storage, orchestration, runtime, and lakehouse foundations
• Lead and develop a high-performing team of data platform engineers based in Berlin
• Evolve platform architecture to support streaming, batch processing, distributed query engines, and large-scale analytical workloads
• Build core platform capabilities including schema registry, data contracts, observability frameworks, metadata management, and semantic layer implementation
• Enforce data retention policies and platform governance controls for different data types and usage patterns
• Improve platform reliability through monitoring, alerting, incident response tooling, and operational readiness frameworks
• Drive platform modernization efforts and simplify legacy systems where clear value can be created
• Define ownership boundaries ensuring the platform team owns shared infrastructure and raw data quality while downstream teams own business logic
• Collaborate with Engineering, Data Science, Data Engineering, Operations, Security, and Product stakeholders on technically complex initiatives

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, data architecture, or related technical roles
• Proven people-management experience with a high technical bar and ability to develop engineering talent
• Strong knowledge of large-scale data platform architecture, including streaming, batch, storage, orchestration, and distributed systems
• Hands-on experience with technologies such as Kafka, Flink, Iceberg, Trino, AWS, Kubernetes, Airflow, Python, SQL, and schema-based data contracts
• Experience leading platforms that handle high-throughput event streams and large-scale analytical datasets
• Track record of leading platform migrations or infrastructure modernization with strong judgment on risk, reliability, cost, and business continuity
• Ability to work effectively across multiple technical and product teams on complex cross-functional initiatives
• High ownership mindset, sound technical judgment, systems thinking, and ability to influence senior stakeholders
• Authorization to work in Germany

How We Work With You

When you apply through Get A Job.ai, our recruiting team will review your profile and conduct an initial screening. If there's a strong match, we will submit your candidacy to our client and coordinate the interview process. Please apply only through our platform—do not contact the client directly, as we are managing this search exclusively.

Pay

Compensation details will be discussed during the screening process and are competitive for the Berlin market at this seniority level.

Equal Opportunity

Get A Job.ai is committed to inclusive hiring practices. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences to apply.