AI-Native Head of Data
We're an AI-forward team: you'll use AI agents and modern ML tooling to work at greater scale than traditional methods allow, with your technical judgment governing every output. We are hiring an AI-Native Head of Data to own the data strategy, architecture, and governance, which is at the core of PHC Global. Our models, our agents, and our analysts are only as good as the data beneath them. You will build the pipelines, stores, and standards that turn messy global biosurveillance signals into the trustworthy, well-governed foundation for our platform.
This is a senior leadership role. Rather than writing pipelines by hand, you will focus on curating high-signal data assets, defining context boundaries and governance for AI models, and guaranteeing data quality, lineage, and security at every step. You will direct AI agents to build and maintain data infrastructure, and you will be accountable for the integrity of the data that helps the U.S. government detect, characterize, and attribute biological threats.
Responsibilities
- Data Strategy & Architecture: Own the end-to-end data architecture on AWS (ingestion, storage, transformation, and serving layers) for both relational and vector data that feed our models and agents.
- Data Governance: Establish and enforce standards for data quality, lineage, access control, and security, ensuring compliance with ethical and regulatory requirements across sensitive datasets.
- AI-Native Pipelines: Direct AI agents to build, test, and maintain data pipelines, and define the specs and review practices that keep agent-built infrastructure reliable and auditable.
- Enabling AI/ML: Build the data foundation for advanced AI/ML capabilities, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agentic systems, and forecasting and anomaly-detection models.
- Collaboration: Work directly with architects, engineers, epidemiologists, and end-users to ensure data serves real mission outcomes. Expect to interface directly with clients, with potential travel 10% of the time for on-site client engagements.
Experience & Qualifications
- Bachelor's in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Statistics, or a related field.
- 8+ years of experience in data engineering, data science, or data platform roles, with at least 3+ years in a technical leadership role.
- Proven experience designing and operating large-scale data platforms and pipelines in production.
- Demonstrated fluency directing AI agents and tools to build and maintain data infrastructure, with accountability for the result.
- Deep understanding of data modeling, data transformation, and data governance, including lineage, quality, and access control.
- Extensive experience with AWS data services and with both relational and vector databases.
- Strong grounding in DevOps and MLOps practices, including Docker, Kubernetes, Git, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Excellent communicator, able to explain data and architecture tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
- This role requires US citizenship and eligibility for a US government security clearance.
Nice to haves
- Experience building data foundations for LLM, RAG, or agentic systems.
- Background in defense contracting (ITAR, ATO, FedRAMP).
- Experience with epidemiology, public health, or biosurveillance data, including wastewater surveillance.
- Prior military service or experience supporting National Security users.
Who We Are
The team supports remote-first employment and candidates from anywhere in the US are welcome to apply. PHC Global is an equal opportunity employer, drug-free workplace, and complies with ADA regulations as applicable. All applicants are considered for all positions without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age, national origin, ancestry, physical/mental disability, medical condition, military/veteran status, genetic information, marital status, ethnicity, alienage or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
Compensation & Benefits
Total compensation includes salary and stock option grants. The salary range for this position is between $170,000 and $220,000 and individual pay is determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. PHC Global offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental and vision insurance, wellbeing offerings, 401(k), unlimited PTO, paid holidays, and a work from home stipend. PHC Global covers 100% of medical premiums for employees and 50% of medical premiums for dependents.