Director, Data Engineering and Data Science

About KEV:

KEV Group is an enterprise SaaS company that provides an all-in-one activity fund management solution for K-12 schools. By seamlessly integrating and automating all fee management processes, our SchoolCash platform provides real-time visibility and control over how districts and schools create, collect, manage, track, and reconcile these funds. Parents benefit from an easy-to-use solution that offers convenience and supports all payment types. More than 26,000 schools across North America rely on our solutions to manage over $4 billion in activity funds annually.

The company is headquartered in Toronto with offices in Cambridge, ON and across the U.S., KEV is a portfolio company of Five Arrows. With over €10 billion of assets under management (AUM), the corporate private equity business of Five Arrows invests in companies with highly defensible market positions, strong management teams, and growth-based business models.

Why Join KEV?

• Work in an industry that benefits children, parents and schools
• Do meaningful and purpose-driven work, and make a real impact
• Join a quickly growing organization with real opportunity for learning and growth
• Passionate and accessible leadership team that cares about people, personally and professionally
• Hybrid work environment (3 days a week in our North York office)
  
  

Job Description:

The Director of Data Engineering will oversee the design, development, and optimization of our cloud-based data infrastructure, supporting both enterprise business intelligence (across Finance, Product, and Revenue) and the data-driven features of our SaaS products. This leader will own the full data lifecycle—from ingestion and transformation to modeling, visualization, and AI-driven solutions—while building and mentoring a high-performing team of data engineers and data scientists.

You will partner cross-functionally with Finance, Product, Revenue Operations, and Customer Success teams to deliver insightful, accurate, and scalable data solutions. You will also collaborate with product development to embed analytics, ML, and AI features into our platform, enhancing our value to customers.

You'll be at the intersection of strategic leadership and deep technical execution, shaping not only how our business runs internally but also how our customers experience data in our products. You'll build the systems, lead the people, and define the vision for data engineering in a company that thrives on innovation in EdTech and FinTech.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute the company's data engineering strategy, aligning with business goals and product vision.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of data engineers and data scientists, fostering technical excellence and collaboration.
• Act as the primary bridge between technical teams and executive stakeholders, ensuring alignment and transparency.
• Partner with Finance, Product, and Revenue teams to define BI and analytics requirements, roadmaps, and priorities.
• Architect and maintain cloud-native data platforms using Azure, Databricks, and related technologies.
• Oversee data ingestion and pipelines, ensuring reliability and scalability.
• Build and maintain data models and semantic layers for business intelligence in Power BI.
• Develop and optimize ETL/ELT workflows, ensuring data quality, governance, and security.
• Lead the integration of AI/ML models into both BI dashboards and customer-facing SaaS products.
• Collaborate with product managers and designers to define analytics and AI product features in the EdTech/FinTech space.
• Work with data scientists to deploy, monitor, and maintain machine learning models in production.
• Ensure data-driven features meet customer needs, regulatory requirements, and performance standards.
• Define and enforce data governance, security, and compliance standards (e.g., GDPR, FERPA, SOC 2).
• Implement data quality frameworks and performance monitoring for pipelines and reports.
• Champion best practices in data engineering, including CI/CD, version control, and automated testing for data pipelines.
  
  
  
  

Skills and Experience:

• Bachelor or Masters degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 7+ years of experience in data engineering, data science, or analytics, including 5+ years in leadership roles
• Deep technical expertise with the following data tech stack:
• Azure Cloud services including familiarity with Data Lake, Synapse and Functions
• Azure Data Factory for ETL/ELT pipelines
• 5Tran or comparable tools for business data ingestion
• Databricks including Delta Lake, Medallion Architecture, MLFlow
• Power BI or similar for dashboards, reports, and semantic modeling
• Proficiency in the following Databricks technologies:
• PySpark: Core API knowledge (RDD, DataFrame, Dataset) for large-scale data transformations
• Spark SQL: Writing optimized SQL queries in Databricks notebooks and SQL Analytics
• Delta Lake: Understanding ACID transactions, schema evolution, time travel, and optimization commands
• Experience with MLOps using MLFlow including model development, experiment tracking, version control, deployment, monitoring, and retraining automation
• Proven track record of delivering impactful data solutions in a software or SaaS environment
• Strong leadership and management skills, with a demonstrated ability to lead and inspire high-performing teams
• Strong business acumen and the ability to align technical strategies with business objectives
• Outstanding problem-solving skills and a data-driven approach to decision-making
• Exceptional collaboration, communication, and stakeholder management skills
• A passion for continuous learning, self-improvement, and staying updated with the latest advancements in technology
  

We Offer: 

• Competitive salary
• Comprehensive health and dental benefits
• Professional development opportunities
• Continuing Education
• Great colleagues and collaboration
  
  

This job description indicates the general nature and level of work expected. It is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities required by an individual joining the KEV team in this or any other capacity.

KEV Group is pleased to accommodate individual needs in accordance with the Accessibility of Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA), within our recruitment process. If you require accommodation at any time throughout the recruitment process, please speak with Human Resources or the hiring manager.

KEV Group is an equal opportunity employer who agrees not to discriminate against any employee or job applicant because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, physical or mental disability, or age.