Data Engineering Manager – E2E Data Platform

At Aptiv, we shape the future of mobility by developing technologies that make vehicles safer, greener, and more connected. We are building and scaling a Data Engineering team in Chennai to deliver the trusted, high-performance data platforms that support our Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and autonomous driving solutions.

As the Data Engineering Manager, you will build, lead, and develop a high-performing team responsible for large-scale vehicle, sensor, validation, and engineering data platforms. You will combine people leadership with strong technical depth to define the team’s strategy, architecture, delivery roadmap, and operating model. Working across global engineering, product, AI/ML, MLOps, validation, security, and automotive domain teams, you will ensure that trusted data is discoverable, reliable, secure, cost-efficient, and ready for analytics and machine learning. You will be accountable for team capability, predictable execution, production health, stakeholder outcomes, and the continued growth of the Chennai organisation.

Your Roles and Responsibilities:

Core Competencies & Demonstrated Success:

• Build, lead, coach, and retain a high-performing Data Engineering team in Chennai, including hiring, onboarding, goal setting, performance management, succession planning, and career development.
• Define the team’s short- and long-term technical strategy, architecture principles, platform roadmap, and capability plan in alignment with global ADAS, autonomous driving, AI/ML, and product priorities.
• Own the delivery of scalable batch and streaming platforms that ingest and process vehicle, sensor, API, file, database, and cloud-service data.
• Establish reusable platform capabilities for ingestion, ETL/ELT, transformation, data modelling, data access, and the creation of analytics-ready and ML-ready datasets.
• Provide technical direction through architecture reviews, design governance, engineering standards, and pragmatic, hands-on guidance for complex data and distributed-systems challenges.
• Own platform reliability, data quality, observability, security, privacy, retention, lineage, metadata, and compliance outcomes across the data lifecycle.
• Define service-level objectives, engineering metrics, operational reviews, incident-management practices, and continuous-improvement actions for business-critical data products.
• Drive performance and cloud-cost optimisation across compute, storage, data movement, and query workloads while balancing scalability, resilience, and delivery speed.
• Lead quarterly and annual planning, prioritisation, estimation, dependency management, risk mitigation, and predictable execution across multiple workstreams.
• Partner with AI/ML, MLOps, perception, planning, validation, labelling, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, product, and programme teams to translate requirements into maintainable platform capabilities.
• Represent the Chennai Data Engineering team in global leadership forums, communicate status and trade-offs clearly, and influence cross-functional decisions toward common data-platform outcomes.

• Foster a culture of ownership, inclusion, engineering excellence, customer focus, innovation, knowledge sharing, and disciplined documentation

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Your Background

• Build, lead, coach, and retain a high-performing Data Engineering team in Chennai, including hiring, onboarding, goal setting, performance management, succession planning, and career development.
• Define the team’s short- and long-term technical strategy, architecture principles, platform roadmap, and capability plan in alignment with global ADAS, autonomous driving, AI/ML, and product priorities.
• Own the delivery of scalable batch and streaming platforms that ingest and process vehicle, sensor, API, file, database, and cloud-service data.
• Establish reusable platform capabilities for ingestion, ETL/ELT, transformation, data modelling, data access, and the creation of analytics-ready and ML-ready datasets.
• Provide technical direction through architecture reviews, design governance, engineering standards, and pragmatic, hands-on guidance for complex data and distributed-systems challenges.
• Own platform reliability, data quality, observability, security, privacy, retention, lineage, metadata, and compliance outcomes across the data lifecycle.
• Define service-level objectives, engineering metrics, operational reviews, incident-management practices, and continuous-improvement actions for business-critical data products.
• Drive performance and cloud-cost optimisation across compute, storage, data movement, and query workloads while balancing scalability, resilience, and delivery speed.
• Lead quarterly and annual planning, prioritisation, estimation, dependency management, risk mitigation, and predictable execution across multiple workstreams.
• Partner with AI/ML, MLOps, perception, planning, validation, labelling, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, product, and programme teams to translate requirements into maintainable platform capabilities.
• Represent the Chennai Data Engineering team in global leadership forums, communicate status and trade-offs clearly, and influence cross-functional decisions toward common data-platform outcomes.

Foster a culture of ownership, inclusion, engineering excellence, customer focus, innovation, knowledge sharing, and disciplined documentationBonus / Preferable to have

• Leadership experience in ADAS, autonomous driving, automotive, IoT, telemetry, sensor, image, video, or other high-volume engineering-data environments.
• Experience with streaming and messaging platforms such as Apache Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, or Azure Event Hubs.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, serverless architectures, and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or AWS CloudFormation.
• Experience with modern data-platform technologies such as Databricks, dbt, Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Snowflake, or equivalent.
• Familiarity with MLOps platforms, feature or dataset management, ground-truth generation, and data workflows for model training, evaluation, validation, and continuous improvement.
• Experience establishing platform product-management practices, self-service capabilities, and service-level objectives. 

Why join us?

You grow at Aptiv.  

Aptiv's winning culture is global by design. We bring together diverse perspectives, cultures, and business contexts to solve our customers' toughest challenges. In this environment, every individual can grow, lead, and make an impact, regardless of background, because inclusion fuels how we innovate and win.  

You make an impact at Aptiv.  

One of the strengths of humanity is our drive to progress, to improve, to achieve more tomorrow than we did yesterday. People need solutions they can trust when it matters most. At Aptiv, you are building those solutions every day. 

You have support at Aptiv.  

We ensure you have the resources and support you need to take care of your family, your physical health, and your mental health with a competitive benefits package. 

Your Benefits at Aptiv:

• Higher Education Opportunities (UDACITY, UDEMY, COURSERA are available for your continuous growth and development);
• Life  and accident insurance;
• Sodexo cards for food and beverages
• Well Being Program that includes regular workshops and networking events;
• EAP Employee Assistance;
• Access to fitness clubs (T&C apply);
• Creche facility for working parents;

Meet the Next-Generation Aptiv:

At Aptiv, we deliver innovative solutions that people trust when it matters most. 

Progress is never static. It is about reaching further, exploring new possibilities, and enabling mobility. Aptiv empowers customers to create solutions people rely on—advancing safety and autonomy in Automotive and Commercial Vehicles, enabling mission-critical performance in Aerospace & Defense, and powering intelligent systems across Energy, Enterprise, and Telecommunications. We also drive precision and efficiency in Industrials & Robotics and support life-critical innovation in Medical technologies.  

Guided by our winning culture and values to Think & Act Like Owners, as One Team, and Play to Win, we turn commitment into results and achieve more together.  

 Join Us to Deliver Innovative Solutions That People Trust! 

Apply today, and together let’s change tomorrow! 

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Aptiv is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.