Senior Director, Data Platform and Cloud Services

Samba TV tracks streaming and broadcast video across the world with our proprietary data and technology. We are on a mission to fundamentally transform the viewing experience for everyone. Our data enables media companies to connect with audiences for new shows and movies, and enables advertisers to engage viewers and measure reach across all their devices. We have an amazing story with a unique perspective on culture formed by a global footprint of data and AI-driven insights.

We're seeking a visionary Senior Director to lead and transform our data platform and cloud services architecture. This role is not about incremental improvements – we need someone who can architect and execute a leap forward in our data infrastructure capabilities, positioning Samba TV at the forefront of TV data analytics and AI-driven insights.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Define and execute a transformative vision for our data platform architecture that scales to billions of daily events
• Partner with CTO and engineering leadership to align platform strategy with business objectives
• Drive adoption of next-generation technologies including vector databases and ML-powered analytics
• Build strategic roadmaps that balance innovation with operational excellence

Technical Architecture

• Lead the evolution from current state to a modern, cloud-native data platform with embedded ML/AI capabilities
• Design fault-tolerant, multi-region architectures supporting real-time and batch processing
• Build and maintain the services, platforms, and frameworks enabling Samba's data engineering teams
• Architect embedding-based systems for content understanding, viewer similarity, and semantic search
• Build infrastructure for vector storage, indexing, and retrieval at scale (billions of embeddings)
• Champion best practices in data governance, security, and compliance (GDPR, CCPA)
• Evaluate and implement emerging technologies (streaming architectures, lakehouse patterns, ML platforms)

ML/AI Infrastructure

• Design platforms for embedding generation, storage, and serving at scale
• Implement vector search capabilities for real-time recommendations and content discovery
• Build infrastructure supporting multimodal embeddings (video, audio, text metadata)
• Enable self-service ML capabilities for data scientists and analysts
• Establish MLOps practices for embedding model lifecycle management

Team & Organizational Development

• Build and mentor a world-class team of platform engineers, ML engineers, and architects
• Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous learning
• Establish clear career paths and growth opportunities for team members
• Drive cross-functional collaboration with data science, product, and engineering teams

Operational Excellence

• Establish SLAs and monitoring frameworks for internal and external clients
• Provide observability tools for Data Engineering and Data Science, including tools to enforce data quality
• Lead vendor relationships and technology partnerships
• Drive automation and self-service capabilities for internal customers

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years in data platform/infrastructure roles, with 5+ years in senior leadership
• Proven track record of leading large-scale platform transformations
• Experience building production embedding systems and vector databases
• Experience with TV/media analytics, AdTech, or similar high-volume data environments
• History of building and scaling teams of 20+ engineers
• Deep expertise in modern data architectures (data mesh, lakehouse, streaming-first)
• Proficiency with, Stream processing (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming), Modern data warehouses/lakes (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery), Workflow management (Airflow, etc), Container orchestration (Kubernetes, EKS/GKE), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation), ML platforms (MLflow, Kubeflow, SageMaker)
• Exceptional communication skills to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences
• Strategic thinking with ability to balance long-term vision with short-term deliverables
• Strong business acumen to connect technical decisions with business outcomes
• Track record of influencing without authority across organizational boundaries

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in TV/video analytics or advertising technology
• Background in content recommendation systems using embeddings
• Knowledge of privacy-preserving analytics and clean room technologies
• Contributions to open-source projects in ML infrastructure or vector search
• Experience with real-time bidding or programmatic advertising infrastructure
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field

Samba TV is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.  We strive to empower connection with one another, reflect the communities we serve, and tackle meaningful projects that make a real impact.

Samba TV may collect personal information directly from you, as a job applicant, Samba TV may also receive personal information from third parties, for example, in connection with a background, employment or reference check, in accordance with the applicable law.
For further details, please see Samba's
Applicant Privacy Policy
.
For residents of the EU , Samba Inc. is the data controller.

Samba TV expects to offer a base salary between $185,000 - $200,000 per year for roles to be performed in New York or California; actual base salary offered will depend on various factors, including but not limited to, location, experience, and performance. Base salary is just one component of Samba TV's total compensation package for employees. Other rewards may include bonuses, short-term incentives, and long-term incentives. In addition, Samba provides health insurance, wellness offerings, life and disability insurance, a retirement savings plan, paid holidays and paid time off (PTO), and other employee benefits.