JLL supports the Whole You, personally and professionally.
Our people at JLL are shaping the future of real estate for a better world by combining world class services, advisory and technology to our clients. We are committed to hiring the best, most talented people in our industry; and we support them through professional growth, flexibility, and personalized benefits to manage life in and outside of work. Whether you’ve got deep experience in commercial real estate, skilled trades, and technology, or you’re looking to apply your relevant experience to a new industry, we empower you to shape a brighter way forward so you can thrive professionally and personally.
Director, Data Engineering (Capital Markets)
About JLL and JLL Technologies
JLL is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. Our vision is to reimagine the world of real estate, creating rewarding opportunities and amazing spaces where people can achieve their ambitions. In doing so, we will build a better tomorrow for our clients, our people, and our communities.
JLL Technologies is a specialized group within JLL. At JLL Technologies, our mission is to bring technological innovation to commercial real estate. We deliver unparalleled digital advisory, implementation, and services solutions to organizations globally. Our goal is to leverage technology to increase the value and liquidity of the world's buildings, while enhancing the productivity and happiness of those that occupy them.
What this job involves
We are seeking an experienced Director, Data Engineering to lead the Capital Markets Data Engineering team. In this role, you will own people leadership, delivery, and technical direction for data platforms and pipelines that power Capital Markets analytics, products, and decision-making across JLL. You will set priorities with Capital Markets and technology leadership, grow a high-performing engineering team, and ensure reliable, governed data assets that scale with the business. The ideal candidate blends hands-on data engineering credibility with proven experience managing engineers and partnering across product, business, and enterprise data functions.
What you'll get to do
As Director of Data Engineering, your "customers" include Capital Markets leadership and practitioners, enterprise data consumers, and partner engineering teams who depend on timely, trustworthy market and deal-related data. Your mission is to lead the Capital Markets data engineering function—defining the roadmap, operating model, and standards that turn complex financial and real estate data into durable platform capabilities. You will align team execution with JLL’s enterprise data strategy while addressing the speed and specificity Capital Markets requires. This is an opportunity to shape how data engineering enables pricing, research, transactions, and investor-facing insights—without owning full-stack product development as a core requirement for the role.
Key responsibilities
Strategic architecture and vision: Define and drive the Capital Markets data platform strategy, consolidating siloed data sources into a unified, governed, and scalable data architecture that serves as the foundation for analytics, reporting, and decision-making across the business.
Technical leadership: Provide technical leadership across the Capital Markets Data Engineering team and related initiatives, setting architectural standards, design patterns, and best practices that elevate data engineering quality organization-wide.
Advanced data integration: Architect sophisticated integration strategies for structured and unstructured data sources, enabling advanced analytics, AI/ML model inputs, and real-time insight generation at enterprise scale—keeping data at the center, not the application layer.
Data platform innovation: Lead the design and delivery of robust platform capabilities that bridge diverse data domains, enabling intelligent search, contextual recommendations, and automated insight generation through well-governed data services and APIs.
Enterprise integration architecture: Design and implement enterprise-grade data integration frameworks—including API strategies, event-driven patterns, and consumption standards—enabling seamless data access across analytics platforms, operational applications, and Agentic AI systems.
ML/AI platform strategy: Partner with data science and ML teams to architect production-ready data foundations, establishing MLOps-compatible data pipelines, feature stores, and model input governance at scale.
AI and knowledge architecture: Guide the design of semantic layers, ontologies, and knowledge graph-style approaches that make Capital Markets data intelligently discoverable and reliably consumable by both human stakeholders and AI/ML systems.
Technical excellence and innovation: Lead data architecture reviews, technology evaluations, and proof-of-concept initiatives. Drive adoption of emerging data engineering best practices and modern stack components across the team.
Enterprise DevOps and data governance: Establish enterprise-grade DataOps practices, observability frameworks, data quality standards, lineage tracking, and compliance controls ensuring data products are production-ready, auditable, and trusted by stakeholders.
Cross-functional leadership: Partner with executive leadership, Product, and Business teams to align data platform capabilities with Capital Markets strategy. Translate complex business challenges into prioritized data roadmaps with measurable outcomes.
Team development and mentorship: Hire, mentor, and grow data engineers across all levels; conduct technical reviews, provide architectural guidance, and build a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Stakeholder management: Serve as the data engineering voice in executive and cross-functional forums—communicating roadmap, trade-offs, and strategic direction to diverse audiences with clarity and confidence.
Who you are
You are a people leader who still speaks the language of data engineering—pipelines, platforms, and production operations. You care deeply about Capital Markets or analogous financial data domains and enjoy connecting engineering work to revenue, risk, and client outcomes. You balance strategic planning with execution discipline, and you create clarity for your team amid competing priorities. You build trust with stakeholders by delivering reliably and by developing engineers who grow in scope and impact.
Qualifications and skills
Required qualifications
People management: 4+ years of experience directly managing data engineers or equivalent software/data teams, including performance management, staffing, and delivery accountability.
10+ years of experience in data engineering and Big Data development, with extensive experience architecting and delivering enterprise-scale, fault-tolerant data platforms.
5+ years of hands-on experience with cloud platforms such as Azure or AWS, including advanced services (e.g., Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Synapse, AWS Glue, EMR, Redshift).
Expert-level proficiency in multiple server-side programming languages including Python, Java, and Scala, with deep expertise in PySpark/Spark for distributed data processing at scale.
Proven expertise in data modeling, data architecture, and designing data systems that balance performance, scalability, maintainability, and cost.
Deep understanding of machine learning lifecycle, MLOps practices, model governance, and production ML systems.
Extensive experience working with diverse data technologies including SQL databases (e.g., Azure SQL, PostgreSQL), NoSQL databases (e.g., Cosmos DB, MongoDB, Cassandra), and AI-centric databases such as vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate) and knowledge/graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Amazon Neptune).
Demonstrated ability to architect and optimize complex data systems for performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
Proven track record of technical leadership, including mentoring senior engineers and leading cross-functional initiatives.
Preferred qualifications
Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
Deep expertise in designing and implementing semantic layers, ontologies, and knowledge graphs for enterprise data systems.
Extensive experience with streaming architectures using Kafka, Spark Streaming, Flink, or similar technologies.
Expert-level understanding of DevOps principles, with hands-on experience designing CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and container orchestration (Kubernetes, EKS, AKS).
Significant experience with LLM-driven workflows, advanced prompt engineering, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures, and orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, AutoGen).
Deep familiarity with AI-powered development tools and practices, driving adoption of AI-augmented software development lifecycles across teams.
Experience with data governance frameworks, compliance standards (GDPR, CCPA), and enterprise security practices.
Published technical articles, conference presentations, or contributions to open-source projects in data engineering or related fields.
Key attributes
Leadership: Builds and retains strong teams; delegates effectively while staying close to critical technical risks.
Stakeholder partnership: Navigates Capital Markets and enterprise priorities with poise; negotiates scope and timelines with data-driven rationale.
Judgment: Makes sound trade-offs among quality, speed, cost, and risk—especially where data is regulated or client-sensitive.
Communication: Explains technical concepts clearly to executives and partners; listens for business constraints that should shape engineering decisions.
Ownership: Accountable for team outcomes, platform health, and continuous improvement of engineering practices.
If this job description resonates with you, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all of the requirements below. We’re interested in getting to know you and what you bring to the table!
Personalized benefits that support personal well-being and growth:
JLL recognizes the impact that the workplace can have on your wellness, so we offer a supportive culture and comprehensive benefits package that prioritizes mental, physical and emotional health.
About JLL –
We’re JLL—a leading professional services and investment management firm specializing in real estate. We have operations in over 80 countries and a workforce of over 102,000 individuals around the world who help real estate owners, occupiers and investors achieve their business ambitions. As a global Fortune 500 company, we also have an inherent responsibility to drive sustainability and corporate social responsibility. That’s why we’re committed to our purpose to shape the future of real estate for a better world. We’re using the most advanced technology to create rewarding opportunities, amazing spaces and sustainable real estate solutions for our clients, our people, and our communities.
Our core values of teamwork, ethics and excellence are also fundamental to everything we do and we’re honored to be recognized with awards for our success by organizations both globally and locally.
Creating a diverse and inclusive culture where we all feel welcomed, valued and empowered to achieve our full potential is important to who we are today and where we’re headed in the future. And we know that unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives help us think bigger, spark innovation and succeed together.
