Director of Data

Position Overview

• Location Type: Not Specified
• Job Type: Not Specified
• Salary: Not Specified

Tailscale is seeking a Director of Data to establish and lead its data engineering, analytics engineering, data analysis, and data science functions. This leadership role requires a strong background in data engineering and analytics engineering, coupled with solid business acumen. The Director will be instrumental in designing and building the data infrastructure to support data-driven decision-making across all departments, including product, engineering, marketing, operations, finance, support, and sales. Reporting to the SVP of Operations, this position is ideal for someone who enjoys hands-on leadership, building and prototyping, architecting systems, writing code, and mentoring a team.

About Tailscale

Tailscale is building the new Internet by delivering software that makes it easy to securely interconnect people and their devices, no matter where they are. From hobbyists to multinational corporations, teams of every size use Tailscale each day to protect their networks, share access to internal tools, and more. We're building a future for the Internet that's easy, sensible, and safe, like it used to be. Founded in 2019 and fully distributed, we're backed by Accel, CRV, Insight, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, develop, and grow a team spanning data engineering, analytics engineering, data analysts, and data scientists.
• Define and execute the strategic roadmap for data infrastructure and analytics capabilities across the organization.
• Oversee the design and implementation of scalable data pipelines, data models, analytics solutions, and business intelligence tooling.
• Establish data governance frameworks, quality standards, and unified data models across operational and product use cases.
• Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Finance, and Product teams to understand and address data needs including reporting.
• Expose Tailscale’s data to departments via a self-service solution for Tailscaler’s to make high-impact decisions.
• Optimize data flows and quality across key business systems (Salesforce, Stripe, Jira, etc.) and downstream analytics platforms (Looker, Grafana, Hightouch, etc.).
• Identify opportunities to leverage ultra-modern AI/ML technologies to enhance product and business intelligence, internal tooling, and customer experience.

What We Are Looking For

• Experience scaling data infrastructure and teams in a fast-growing startup environment, with a track record of building and leading technical talent.
• Deep understanding of modern data architectures, data modeling, and pipeline design with strong technical judgment for system optimization.
• High curiosity, growth mindset, and experimentation orientation around AI and the intersection of AI and data infrastructure.
• Proven ability to create and execute long-term data strategy while delivering immediate business impact. You think big, start small, and ship fast. You’re eager to test what’s new and know when to standardize what works. You have built systems that have scaled.
• Hands-on experience with a modern data stack.
• Forward-thinking approach to building a data function that incorporates modern tools, including new AI tools and formats, to empower end-users in their decision-making.