Role Description
This is a remote position; however, the candidate must reside within 30 miles of one of the following locations: Portland, ME; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; San Francisco Bay Area, CA; and Seattle/WA.
As WEX continues to scale its Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform, the Data Acquisition Team plays a critical role in enabling secure, scalable, and reliable ingestion of data from hundreds of internal systems and external sources.
We are seeking a hands-on Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Data Acquisition to lead our team in acquiring and processing high-volume data, while simultaneously driving the evolution toward AI-augmented, spec-driven software development to enhance platform scalability and delivery speed. This role requires a strong leader with deep technical expertise in data pipelines, distributed systems, and cloud architecture, who can drive technical excellence, foster a culture of innovation, and align the data acquisition strategy with overall business goals.
Responsibilities
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Engineering Leadership & Team Development:
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Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of software engineers focused on data acquisition.
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Foster a collaborative and inclusive culture.
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Oversee performance management, career pathing, and top-tier talent acquisition.
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AI-Augmented Development Strategy:
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Pioneer the adoption of AI-assisted software development across engineering teams.
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Define metrics and implement AI-enabled development workflows to enhance engineering productivity.
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Specification-Driven Development (SDD):
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Establish and enforce a specification-first development methodology.
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Standardize templates for all key artifacts (APIs, data contracts, ingestion pipelines, architecture).
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Ensure end-to-end traceability across implementation, validation, deployment, and observability.
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Architectural Transformation & Modernization:
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Drive the migration to automated, metadata-driven, and declarative engineering architectures.
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Develop reusable frameworks that translate technical specifications directly into generated code, deployment artifacts, and operational controls.
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Strategic Roadmap Execution:
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Define and execute the technical roadmap for all data acquisition pipelines and systems.
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Ensure the infrastructure is highly scalable, reliable, secure, and cost-effective to accommodate accelerating data volume and velocity.
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Technical Governance & Oversight:
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Provide authoritative technical direction on the design, development, and maintenance of mission-critical data ingestion frameworks.
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Mandate and enforce best practices for software engineering, data governance, and data quality.
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Stakeholder Collaboration:
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Partner closely with Product Management, Data Science, Data Governance, and other engineering teams.
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Align data solutions with overarching business requirements and strategic data needs.
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Engineering Process Optimization:
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Institute and champion continuous improvement in engineering processes, tools, and methodologies.
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Include CI/CD, automation, monitoring, and alerting practices.
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Sustained Operational Excellence:
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Guarantee the high availability and performance of all data acquisition systems.
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Take ownership of incident response, recovery, and thorough root cause analysis for major service disruptions.
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Resource & Financial Stewardship:
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Oversee budget allocation, resource management, and capacity planning.
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Ensure the strategic growth of the data acquisition organization.
Qualifications
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Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
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Experience: 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5+ years in a management role overseeing software engineering or data acquisition teams.
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Experience in leading virtual teams is highly desirable.
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Technical Expertise:
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Experience implementing AI-assisted engineering workflows in production software organizations.
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Deep understanding of specification-driven engineering, declarative system design, or model-driven development.
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Deep expertise in building and managing high-volume, real-time and batch data pipelines (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Pulsar).
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Proficiency with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and experience designing scalable, serverless, or containerized data ingestion architectures (e.g., Kubernetes, EKS/AKS/GKE).
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Strong knowledge of various data sources, integration patterns (APIs, web scraping, messaging queues), and ETL/ELT tools.
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Expertise in programming languages such as Java, Python, Scala, or Go.
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Solid understanding of database technologies (SQL, NoSQL, Data Warehouses like Snowflake, Redshift, etc.).
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Leadership Skills: Proven ability to lead, motivate, and manage multiple distributed teams. Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills.
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Problem Solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to define solutions for complex technical challenges.
Benefits
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Health, dental and vision insurances.
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Retirement savings plan.
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Paid time off.
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Health savings account.
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Flexible spending accounts.
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Life insurance.
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Disability insurance.
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Tuition reimbursement.
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And more.
Pay Range
$175,600.00 - $204,300.00