Director, Cloud Technology

The Director of MERLIN is responsible for the strategic leadership, engineering, and operational excellence of MERLIN, the Raymond James Oversight (RJ Oversight) cloud data lake. MERLIN serves as the centralized foundation for regulatory oversight, supervision, compliance, operational reporting, analytics, and AI-enabled insights, enabling trusted, governed, and scalable access to data across RJ Oversight.

This leader will define and execute the technology vision, architecture, and roadmap for the MERLIN platform, ensuring the delivery of secure, scalable, resilient, and high-performing data and analytics capabilities that support critical business functions across RJ Oversight. The Director will lead multiple engineering teams responsible for platform engineering, data engineering, cloud modernization, business intelligence, and operational support while partnering closely with business leaders, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, Information Security, Risk, Compliance, Operations, and other technology organizations.

The Director will foster a culture of engineering excellence, continuous improvement, and innovation while ensuring operational stability, regulatory compliance, and exceptional service delivery. As the technology owner for MERLIN, this leader will drive the evolution of the platform as the strategic cloud data lake for RJ Oversight, enabling modern analytics, automation, and AI capabilities that accelerate business value while maintaining the highest standards of governance, security, and operational excellence.

Technical Skills/Experience:

• 10+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, business intelligence, or enterprise data platforms.

• 5+ years of technology leadership experience managing engineering teams responsible for enterprise data and analytics solutions.

• Deep understanding of modern data architecture, data warehousing, ETL/ELT, data integration, metadata management, and data governance principles.

• Experience designing and delivering cloud-based data platforms utilizing technologies such as Snowflake, AWS/Azure, Databricks, or similar enterprise cloud ecosystems.

• Strong knowledge of SQL and enterprise data modeling with experience supporting large-scale analytical workloads.

• Experience with business intelligence and visualization platforms such as Qlik Sense, Power BI, Tableau, or similar technologies.

• Knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/OpenTofu), version control, and software engineering best practices.

• Experience leading modernization initiatives involving cloud migration, automation, and platform standardization.

• Understanding of data security, privacy, regulatory compliance, and risk management within financial services.

• Experience managing vendor relationships, technology roadmaps, and cross-functional delivery across multiple business stakeholders.

Professional Competencies:

• Builds and develops high-performing engineering teams through coaching, mentoring, and talent development.

• Creates an environment of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.

• Leads organizational change while maintaining team engagement and execution excellence.

• Aligns technology investments with business strategy and enterprise architecture.

• Develops long-term platform roadmaps that improve scalability, resiliency, and operational efficiency.

• Anticipates future technology trends and identifies opportunities to modernize capabilities.

• Successfully delivers complex, multi-team technology initiatives on schedule and within budget.

• Balances strategic initiatives with operational support responsibilities.

• Prioritizes work effectively across competing business and regulatory demands.

• Communicates effectively with executives, business leaders, architects, engineers, and external partners.

• Translates complex technical concepts into business-focused outcomes.

• Builds consensus across organizations with differing priorities.

• Develops trusted relationships with Compliance, Risk, Operations, Supervision, Internal Audit, and other enterprise stakeholders.

• Understands business processes and translates business needs into scalable technical solutions.

• Promotes enterprise standards and eliminates duplicative capabilities through shared platforms.

• Ensures platform stability, availability, security, and service quality.

• Champions operational excellence through monitoring, automation, and continuous improvement.

• Leads incident management, production support, and governance processes.

• Drives adoption of emerging technologies, AI-enabled analytics, automation, and modern engineering practices.

• Encourages experimentation while maintaining appropriate governance and risk controls.

• Continuously improves developer productivity and platform capabilities.