Data Platform Lead

About ZURU

ZURU is a global innovation-led company focused on reshaping industries through automation, bold thinking, and rapid product development. Its portfolio spans ZURU Toys, ZURU Tech, and ZURU Edge, with brands that are recognised internationally across toys, technology, and FMCG. Established in 2003 by brothers Nick and Mat Mowbray, the company has expanded to more than 5,000 direct and indirect team members across over 30 locations worldwide.

The business is home to well-known brands such as Bunch O Balloons, Mini Brands, XSHOT, Rainbocorns, Smashers, MONDAY Haircare, Rascals, NOOD, BONKERS, and Gumi Yum Surprise.

Role Overview

As Data Platform Lead, you will guide ZURU’s data platform and data products teams to create measurable outcomes across the Toys, Tech, and Edge businesses. You will directly lead the platform function covering Databricks, AWS, Fivetran, and orchestration, while also steering the data products team to deliver value every week. The role is hands-on, outcome-driven, and focused on enabling self-service, simplifying the stack, and removing initiatives that do not create impact.

What Success Looks Like

• Within the first 2 weeks, you take ownership of the platform, get up to speed on the Databricks migration, AWS SSO, and Fivetran connectors, and identify the top three blockers affecting the business.
• By the first month, you have delivered 1 to 2 quick wins, set up a weekly delivery reporting rhythm, prioritised the platform team’s immediate work, and built strong stakeholder relationships.
• By the first quarter, the data products team is delivering visible weekly value, the platform is stable with dev/prod separation in place, and the team is operating in a federated model where domains self-serve and the platform provides shared foundations.
• By month six, business stakeholders view the data products team as a high-value partner, the infrastructure is governed and stable with 99.5%+ uptime, and you are mentoring the platform team deeply on Databricks, AWS, and Fivetran.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the data platform function end to end, including lakehouse infrastructure, connectors, identity access, orchestration, architecture decisions, code reviews, design reviews, and technical mentoring.
• Support a federated operating model where the platform team provides shared capabilities and business units retain ownership of their own data products, dashboards, analytics, and domain logic.
• Deliver work in short cycles, favouring MVPs in 2 to 3 weeks, validating with one business unit before scaling, and stopping initiatives that fail to show impact within 4 to 6 weeks.
• Focus on measurable business outcomes such as time saved, better decisions, improved forecasting, adoption, and satisfaction rather than counting technical outputs.
• Design modular, composable systems that remain flexible, avoid unnecessary complexity, and reduce lock-in as the stack evolves.
• Promote self-service through clear documentation, paved roads, and lightweight governance so that most access requests can be handled automatically.
• Maintain strong security, privacy, and compliance standards while ensuring governance supports speed instead of slowing teams down.
• Work closely with stakeholders across business units, maintain weekly engagement, and make delivery-backed decisions that protect focus on the highest-value work.
• Lead, coach, and develop the data engineering team, strengthening capability through hiring, mentoring, restructuring where needed, and closing skill gaps.

Tools and Technologies

The role requires practical experience with AWS services such as S3, IAM, MWAA Airflow, and ECS, along with Databricks, Delta, notebooks, SQL, Fivetran, DBT, Airflow, Power BI, Terraform, and related data engineering tools.

Experience and Working Style

You should bring 5 to 10 years of experience leading data teams with a clear focus on business outcomes. The ideal background includes data product thinking, federated ownership models, fast experimentation, and strong hands-on technical leadership across SQL, Python, data modelling, pipelines, and cloud platforms. This role suits someone who can guide engineering quality without needing to code daily.

Life at ZURU

ZURU describes its culture as ambitious, high-performing, and fast moving, with an emphasis on learning, improvement, and collaboration. Team members are expected to take ownership of their growth, and the company offers the chance to work in an environment with significant career opportunity.

What We Offer

• A growth-oriented culture
• Access to a high-performing team
• Competitive pay

Additional Information

This opportunity is based in Auckland, New Zealand and is an onsite full-time role. The company emphasises speed, measurable outcomes, self-service, and continuous simplification of the data landscape. It also expects the selected leader to make decisive calls, including stopping low-value work and focusing resources on what delivers the strongest business impact.

No salary, stipend, start date, or application deadline was provided in the source.