Senior Director, Support - Data and AI Platforms

This is a remote role that may only be hired in the following locations: NC, AZ, GA, FL, TX

The Senior Director, Support - Data and AI Platforms will lead global support operations for our Data Platform, AI Platform, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) functions. This role is responsible for ensuring the reliability, performance, and user experience of mission-critical data and AI platforms built on AWS, Snowflake, dbt, and modern orchestration frameworks. The Senior Director will oversee data support, production operations, incident management, and reliability engineering-building a world-class data support organization that enables high availability across the enterprise data platform, enterprise analytics, machine learning, AI and real-time data systems. Collaborating with cross-functional teams, this leader will operationalize new capabilities, drive continuous improvement, and uphold a culture of rigor and trust.

Success Measures:

• High reliability and availability for all data & AI platforms (SLA/SLO driven).
• Reduction in MTTR and incident volume through automation and preventative engineering.
• Strong cross-functional trust with Engineering, Product, and Business partners.
• Scalable, measurable support processes integrated across AWS, Snowflake, dbt, and AI platforms.
• A well-run, proactive, globally aligned support organization.

Strategic Leadership:

• Build, lead, and scale a global support organization spanning Data Engineering Support, AI Platform Support, and SRE Operations.
• Define the operating model, support tiers, SLAs, escalation paths, and incident lifecycle.
• Define the roadmap for modernizing data support using automation, AI copilots, self-healing pipelines, and observability modernization.
• Champion reliability frameworks such as ITIL, DevOps, SRE, and FinOps for Snowflake and AWS.
• Establish a culture of operational excellence, reliability, ownership, and continuous improvement.

Data Platform Support:

• Lead the development of a scalable, resilient, and secure data platform to support real-time and batch data processing.
• Lead the batch and real time data movement solutions across all operational and analytical application for the bank.

AI Platform Support (AWS):

• Oversee support for enterprise AI/ML platforms, including SageMaker (training, inference, pipelines, endpoints), Bedrock or custom LLM hosting, AI feature stores, model registries, vector databases, and embedding services
• Manage incident triage for model deployments, compute scaling, GPU/accelerator workloads, and data drift monitoring.
• Ensure ML Ops tools (model monitoring, lineage, observability) are operational and supportable.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE):

• Lead SRE teams focused on:
  • Availability, performance, and resiliency of data and AI platforms
  • Infrastructure as code (Terraform) and DevOps Pipelines (GitLab)
  • Observability tooling (Dynatrace)
• Drive improvements in MTTR and MTTD.
• Implement best practices around on-call engineering and automated runbooks.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Management:

• Partner with Enterprise Command Center and leverage enterprise capabilities for data support
• Collaborate with data engineering, AI/ML engineering, cloud & Infra, data product, and security teams
• Leverage the Global Capability Center (GCC) in India to build the team

Bachelor's Degree and 10 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management. OR High School Diploma or GED and 14 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management.

Preferred:

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field (Master's degree preferred).
• 12+ years of experience in data engineering, data operations and support, with at least 5 years in a leadership capacity.
• Proven experience in the financial services or banking sector, preferably in a Large Financial Institution (LFI) with a strong understanding of industry-specific data requirements.

Technical Skills

• Deep hands-on understanding of
  • Snowflake (performance, security, cost, monitoring)
  • AWS architecture & services
  • dbt (Cloud, Core, CI/CD, model support)
  • Airflow/MWAA/Astronomer or equivalent orchestration
• Proven ability to build and lead global operations or support teams.
• Strong command of incident management, observability, reliability engineering, and operational rigor.
• Executive-level communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience supporting AI/ML platforms, including SageMaker, Bedrock, and ML Ops frameworks.
• Experience with Snowflake cost governance, dbt metadata management, or platform-level automation.
• SRE/ITIL certifications or advanced AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer).

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field (Master's degree preferred).
• 12+ years of experience in data engineering, data operations and support, with at least 5 years in a leadership capacity.
• Proven experience in the financial services or banking sector, preferably in a Large Financial Institution (LFI) with a strong understanding of industry-specific data requirements.

Technical Skills

• Deep hands-on understanding of
  • Snowflake (performance, security, cost, monitoring)
  • AWS architecture & services
  • dbt (Cloud, Core, CI/CD, model support)
  • Airflow/MWAA/Astronomer or equivalent orchestration
• Proven ability to build and lead global operations or support teams.
• Strong command of incident management, observability, reliability engineering, and operational rigor.
• Executive-level communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience supporting AI/ML platforms, including SageMaker, Bedrock, and ML Ops frameworks.
• Experience with Snowflake cost governance, dbt metadata management, or platform-level automation.
• SRE/ITIL certifications or advanced AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer).

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Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/benefits.