Happen Bank

Job Summary:
Happen Bank is built around a simple purpose: to clear the way to help people turn intention into action, and action into financial progress. The VP, Data Platforms is responsible for the data platform, infrastructure, governance, and engineering services that power every business at Happen Bank, ensuring secure, scalable, and reliable capabilities that support analytics, machine learning, and operational decision-making.
Responsibilities:
• Define and execute the strategy, architecture, and roadmap for Happen Bank's enterprise data and AI platforms
• Own the customer data foundation, including canonical data models and the Customer Data Platform (CDP), enabling a trusted single source of truth across Marketing, Lending, Credit Risk, Fraud, Operations, and Compliance
• Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of enterprise data, from source-system ingestion through canonical modeling, certified marts, and BI / AI consumption
• Lead modernization of the data ecosystem while balancing business priorities, platform resiliency, and long-term scalability
• Build platform capabilities that support analytics, operational decisioning, customer experiences, experimentation, and AI-powered products
• Shape Happen Bank's AI strategy from a data platform perspective, including feature stores, model serving, MLOps, and responsible AI adoption in a regulated environment
• Build self-service analytics and activation capabilities that enable teams to access trusted data without requiring engineering intervention
• Partner with Product, Analytics, and business leaders to translate business needs into scalable platform capabilities
• Enable AI and machine learning teams through robust data, platform, and governance capabilities that accelerate innovation while maintaining compliance and risk standards
• Establish enterprise standards for data governance, Critical Data Elements (CDEs), metadata, lineage, quality, privacy, and regulatory compliance
• Lead Data SRE, observability, resiliency, production support, and operational excellence initiatives that ensure secure, reliable, and scalable platform operations
• Ensure platforms meet security, risk management, and regulatory requirements appropriate for a digital bank
• Drive data quality, monitoring, and governance programs that support trusted business and regulatory reporting
• Lead and develop high-performing teams across Data Engineering, Platform Engineering, Governance & Enablement, ML Platform, and Production Support
• Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, operational excellence, and continuous improvement
• Build organizational capabilities, succession plans, and leadership pipelines that support long-term growth
• Attract, coach, mentor, and retain exceptional engineering leaders and individual contributors
• Partner with executive leadership to align data and AI investments with company strategy and measurable business outcomes
• Manage strategic vendor relationships, platform investments, and technology spend to ensure efficient delivery and responsible economics
• Drive a data-first culture by enabling teams across the organization to make faster, better-informed decisions
• Communicate platform strategy, investment priorities, risks, and outcomes to executive leaders, business stakeholders, and regulators
Qualifications:
Required:
• 13+ years of software engineering experience, including 10+ years leading and developing engineering teams
• 5+ years of experience leading enterprise data platforms, data products, or data engineering organizations in a public cloud environment
• Demonstrated experience building and scaling data platforms that support analytics, machine learning, customer experiences, and operational decision-making
• Strong understanding of modern data architectures, governance frameworks, observability, metadata management, and AI/ML platforms
• Experience building and operating cloud-based data ecosystems using technologies such as Databricks, dbt, Fivetran, data catalogs, observability tooling, and modern data governance platforms
• Proven success leading large-scale platform modernization and cloud transformation initiatives
• Strong knowledge of production operations, reliability engineering, incident management, and platform support models
• Experience partnering with Product, Analytics, Risk, Compliance, and business leaders to deliver enterprise data capabilities
• Strong executive communication skills with the ability to influence business, technology, and regulatory stakeholders
• Demonstrated ability to translate business objectives into platform strategy and measurable outcomes
• Hands-on familiarity with advanced analytics, machine learning, and data science workflows and the platform requirements they impose
• Experience operating within highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, or similar environments
• Bachelor's degree or higher, or equivalent combination of education and experience
Preferred:
• Experience working in both high-growth organizations and large-scale enterprises
• Understanding of consumer financial products, personal financial management, or regulated marketing environments
• Experience leading enterprise AI enablement initiatives and modern data platform transformations
• Experience supporting highly regulated consumer products and operating within complex compliance and governance frameworks
Company:
We started as LendingClub. Founded in 2007, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, USA, with a team of 1001-5000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.