How You'll Help Us Keep Climbing (Overview & Key Responsibilities)
It's an exciting time to be part of the Operations Planning and Performance (OP&P) organization as we modernize the data foundations that support the airline operations. OP&P helps Delta operations function as an integrated system; anticipating risks, aligning priorities, and delivering actionable insights that improve operational performance, customer outcomes, and enable profitable growth. The Data Foundations team is responsible for designing, building, and stewarding trusted, well-governed data products and platforms that enable analytics, engineering, automation, and AI at scale. Our mission is to create the foundational data capabilities that help OP&P make better decisions, operate more efficiently, and accelerate innovation.
To achieve this, we are leading a transformation strategy to:
- Modernize from creating single-purpose data assets toward building scalable data products that can support multiple business analytics & science use cases
- Design & manage a modernized analytics/engineering developer workspace that enables creating more reliable and hardened curation pipelines & advanced analytic capabilities
- Steward proper business data management that reduce duplication, improve consistency, and enable trusted, effective use of data through aligned business definitions, contextual understanding, ontology, and governance standards
This role will primarily serve as the team lead in transforming our current data asset portfolio into a trusted foundation of hardened, reusable data products. Working in close partnership with IT, Operations, and Analytics stakeholders, this individual will translate business priorities into clear, delivery-ready requirements while maintaining accountability for business context, data quality standards, stewardship decisions, and realization of business value. Additionally, this role will provide thought leadership across the Data Foundations team, helping shape and advance capabilities in data management, governance, infrastructure & frameworks.
- Develop, document, and steward the operations semantic layer: business definitions, critical data elements, metadata, business rules & logic, ontology, lineage expectations, and data quality standards.
- Facilitate functional specification, source-to-target mapping, and transformation logic reviews to confirm that business intent and data meaning are accurately represented before implementation.
- Identify opportunities to consolidate redundant data assets and promote the adoption of common foundational data products across multiple business processes and functional domains.
- Collaborate with engineering and architecture teams to design and evolve modern data platforms, developer workspaces, and data pipelines that support scalable and reliable data delivery.
- Represent OP&P in enterprise data governance councils and working groups, and coach/mentor junior data stewards as the stewardship function scales.
- Drive adoption of enterprise data governance standards, stewardship practices, metadata management, data quality processes, and documentation requirements across the Data Foundations domain.
- Lead workshops to define business processes, collect operational context, and better understand upstream policy, process and technology workflows that contribute to how data flows.
- Partner with Operations, Technology, IT, Analytics, and business stakeholders to identify data needs, define priorities, and translate business requirements into clear, delivery-ready product roadmaps and requirements.
- Serve as the product engineer and steward for foundational data assets & products; ensuring alignment on business meaning, data quality expectations, and consumption for OP&P.
What You Need To Succeed (Minimum Qualifications)
- Demonstrates that privacy is a priority when handling personal data.
- 5+ years of experience in data management, product ownership, data engineering, data modeling, data governance, or related discipline.
- Experience gathering business requirements and translating business needs into actionable product priorities and acceptance criteria.
- Ability to influence, facilitate, and drive consensus across business, operational, analytical, and technology stakeholders.
- Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional initiatives with multiple stakeholder groups and competing priorities.
- Strong understanding of data governance, data quality, metadata, lineage, master/reference data, and stewardship principles.
- Strong analytical and interpersonal skills, with the ability to develop effective relationships and influence without direct authority.
- Superior written and verbal communication skills, as well as executive presence to be an effective representative of the business across the organization.
- Experience working in Agile delivery environments and partnering with technical teams on data product delivery.
- Familiarity with modern enterprise data platforms, cloud data services, data catalogs, or analytics ecosystems.
- Applied experience with SQL & Python.
- Consistently prioritizes safety and security of self, others, and personal data.
- Embraces diverse people, thinking, and styles.
- Possesses a high school diploma, GED, or high school equivalency.
- Is at least 18 years of age and has authorization to work in the United States.
What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)
- Experience implementing enterprise data governance frameworks, stewardship workflows, or domain ownership models from the ground up.
- Experience defining critical data elements, business glossaries, source-to-target mapping, transformation rules, and data quality controls.
- Experience with AWS or other cloud data solutions and services (Lambda, Glue, Redshift, Airflow).
- Experience with Git, Agility (VersionOne) & Aha!
- Familiarity or experience within operational domains such as Aircraft, Airspace, Airport, Crew and Flights.
- Extensive experience serving as a data product owner, product engineer or data steward.
Benefits And Perks To Help You Keep Climbing
Our culture is rooted in a shared dedication to living our values – Care, Integrity, Resilience, Servant Leadership, and Teamwork – every day, in everything we do. At Delta, our people are our success. At the heart of what we offer is our focus on Sharing Success with Delta employees. Exploring a career at Delta gives you a chance to see the world while earning great compensation and benefits to help you keep climbing along the way:
- Competitive salary, industry-leading profit sharing program, and performance incentives
- 401(k) with generous company contributions up to 9%
- Paid time off including vacation, holidays, paid personal time, maternity and parental leave
- Comprehensive health benefits including medical, dental, vision, short/long term disability and life benefits
- Family care assistance through fertility support, surrogacy and adoption assistance, lactation support, subsidized back-up care, and programs that help with loved ones in all stages
- Holistic Wellbeing programs to support physical, emotional, social, and financial health, including access to an employee assistance program offering support for you and anyone in your household, free financial coaching, and extensive resources supporting mental health
- Domestic and International space-available flight privileges for employees and eligible family members
- Career development programs to achieve your long-term career goals
- World-wide partnerships to engage in community service and innovative goals created to focus on sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint
- Business Resource Groups created to connect employees with common interests to promote inclusion, provide perspective and help implement strategies
- Recognition rewards and awards through the platform Unstoppable Together
- Access to over 500 discounts, specialty savings and voluntary benefits through Deltaperks such as car and hotel rentals and auto, home, and pet insurance, legal services, and childcare
