VP of Data (Database & Clusters)

My client is seeking an experienced and strategic Head of Data to lead its data organisation. This leader will be accountable for the databases and clusters that power the platform at scale, the reliability of the wider data platform, and the BI services that provide customers with actionable insights into their businesses.The role carries direct management responsibility for the teams that own each of these areas and requires a leader who can operate effectively at both the strategic and deeply technical level.ResponsibilitiesDatabase Management: Own the strategy, architecture, and lifecycle management of my client’s production database estate, including MySQL, ClickHouse, Redis, and related systems. This includes capacity planning, performance tuning, high availability, and ensuring data integrity at scale.Cluster Management: Lead the design, scaling, and operational excellence of database and analytics clusters, covering provisioning, replication, sharding, upgrades, and cost-efficient scaling to support significant data growth.Data Platform Reliability: Define and uphold reliability standards across the data platform end-to-end, including SLOs/SLIs, incident response, monitoring and observability, disaster recovery, and proactive risk mitigation across the data infrastructure.BI & Analytics Services: Drive the strategy and delivery of customer-facing BI services, ensuring users have timely, accurate, and actionable insights into their business and sales performance while ensuring the underlying reporting infrastructure scales reliably.Team Leadership: Build, mentor, and lead the managers and engineers responsible for these areas. Establish a clear organisational structure, career paths, and performance expectations across the data organisation.Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Engineering, Product, and Commercial leadership to align data infrastructure investments with my client’s broader technology roadmap and business priorities.Budget & Resource Management: Own the budget for the data organisation, balancing performance, reliability, and cost across databases, clusters, infrastructure, and vendor tooling.Risk Management & Compliance: Ensure data systems and practices comply with relevant regulatory and data-protection requirements, including SAMA and PDPL, embedding security and compliance into the way the organisation operates.QualificationsExperience: 10+ years of experience in data or infrastructure engineering, including at least 3 years in a leadership role managing teams responsible for databases, clusters, or large-scale data platforms.Technical Expertise: Deep, hands-on expertise in database architecture and operations, with MySQL and/or ClickHouse strongly preferred, alongside experience in cluster management, replication, sharding, and performance optimisation for high-throughput systems.Reliability Track Record: Demonstrated experience operating highly available and reliable data platforms, including incident management, observability, and disaster recovery.BI & Analytics: Experience delivering BI or analytics products to external customers, with a strong understanding of data modelling and reporting pipelines at scale.Leadership: Strong leadership and strategic thinking skills, with a proven ability to build, develop, and inspire high-performing engineering teams.Communication: Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to articulate technical strategy to engineering teams, executive leadership, and wider business stakeholders.Preferred ExperienceExperience operating ClickHouse or other columnar/analytical databases in production at scale.Familiarity with cloud platforms, preferably AWS, and Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform.Background within e-commerce, marketplaces, or customer-facing SaaS platforms.Strong understanding of data security, privacy, and compliance within Saudi Arabia/GCC, as well as the wider global regulatory environment.