Engineering Manager: Engineering Data Platform Enablement

Data Platform Enablement keeps Nordstrom's analytics and data platforms running, evolving, and getting simpler. We own a broad portfolio across GCP and AWS — BigQuery, Looker Core, Metabase, and the access management and cost optimization that keep them healthy. We're a small team covering a large surface area, and AI is how we do it. This is a player-coach role. You own delivery, technical standards, operational health, and the growth of your engineers — and you stay hands-on, writing code and building automation alongside them. You partner with a Product Manager who owns vision and stakeholders, while you own technical delivery, architecture, and team health. We use AI every day — not occasionally — to write code, automate operations, and investigate incidents. We run Kanban with continuous flow and weekly demos: no sprints, no story points. Our engineers are generalists who work across the whole portfolio, pair, cross-train, and value direct contribution over process.

Responsibilities

Lead engineering delivery across BigQuery/GCP, GCP Looker, Metabase, and AWS workloads; Own platform reliability, incident response, and on-call for production systems; Drive capacity planning — forecasting growth, managing compute costs, and scaling ahead of demand; Support the deprecation of legacy platforms (MicroStrategy, Tableau); Own enterprise access provisioning and governance across the data platform; Lead cost optimization across GCP, AWS, and platform tooling in partnership with engineering and finance; Define access policies, tiering models, and provisioning workflows with security and compliance partners; Establish LookML governance, development standards, and deployment practices for Looker Core; Partner with analytics teams on explore design, data modeling, and dashboard best practices; Own platform health, migration governance, and the Looker development lifecycle; Lead the CA enablement strategy — Golden Query standards, agent development, adoption; Manage token utilization and capacity planning with Insights Delivery leadership; Partner with every team across the organization to drive CA maturity enterprise-wide; Set technical direction: architecture, standards, monitoring, and prioritization; Develop your engineers and coach AI fluency through hands-on guidance and a high adoption bar; Contribute as an engineer: write code, build tooling, and review pull requests alongside the team; Own hiring, capacity planning, and team health

Requirements

2+ years leading engineering teams, with direct accountability for delivery and people development; 5+ years building software, platforms, infrastructure, or data systems; Hands-on Python proficiency (or equivalent) you still write today — direct technical contribution is expected; Strong cloud experience across GCP and/or AWS, with fluency in Git, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code; Experience owning access management programs at scale; Daily use of AI coding tools and a real point of view on how they change the way teams work

Nice to have

Data platform or BI depth: BigQuery, Looker, Metabase, Tableau, or MicroStrategy; Terraform and Kubernetes; Cloud cost optimization at scale; Analytics access provisioning in SailPoint IdentityNow via SCIM group synchronization; Hands-on Dataplex zone governance; Experience standing up an AI-first engineering practice; Familiarity with Conversational Analytics, LLM-powered data tools, or semantic layer patterns; Experience at a large-scale retail, e-commerce, or consumer organization

Benefits

Medical/Vision, Dental, Retirement and Paid Time Away; Life Insurance and Disability; Merchandise Discount and EAP Resources; performance-based incentives/bonuses; 401k; medical/vision/dental/life/disability insurance options; PTO accruals; Holidays