VP Excellence & Engineering (12 month FTC)

About WPP Media

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world-class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth.

WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.

For more information, visit wppmedia.com.

VP Excellence & Engineering (FTC) - 1152

About Wpp & Opendoor

At WPP, we’re constantly reinventing the future of creativity on an ever-broader canvas, bringing together unrivalled talent, resources and skills to provide an integrated offer of communications, experience, commerce and technology.

Over the last decade, we have developed a dedicated global client practice with the mission of accelerating WPP’s impact for our largest clients by bringing them the best of WPP. Each team is custom-built around a client’s specific needs and challenges, providing easy access to the right capabilities. And that’s why we’ve built OpenDoor for Amazon.

OpenDoor is a unique integration of the best of WPP and Amazon – building on their respective strengths and visions. Whether at WPP or at Amazon, every project is an OpenDoor on new possibilities. Anything and everything can be an opportunity for our people to drive impact – for them to innovate, learn, thrive, and occasionally fail too.

The unique OpenDoor partnership model is built to deliver next level Productivity, fueled by our industry-leading approach to People, Platforms, and Process. OpenDoor spans across all WPP agencies and disciplines such as media, business consultancy, communications and brand strategy, tech and commerce, public relations, and production.

OpenDoor’s values are built from Amazon’s own 16 Leadership Principles, and WPP’s core values of Open, Optimistic and Extraordinary. Together, when WPP’s Creative Transformation meets Amazon’s next-level customer centricity, our people come together to challenge and impact what’s done today and build a better future.

By joining OpenDoor, not only are you joining a cross-function team partnering with one of WPP’s top five global clients, but you are also taking a step to challenge yourself and the world around you every day, working in the most unusual way on some of Earth’s most ambitious opportunities in marketing, tech, media, business, and creativity.

About The Role

We are looking for an experienced VP Engineering Excellence (Solution Architect) to lead solution architecture and engineering excellence for one of the world’s most prominent data-driven clients. This role sits at the centre of OpenDoor’s advertising data infrastructure, ensuring the pipelines, datasets and reporting workflows that power performance-driven insights are scalable, accurate and aligned to client needs.

This role is based in the UK and reports to the Global Data, Technology and Analytics Lead. Our OpenDoor Global Data team focuses on developing custom systems and processes to capture, validate and provide some of the most sophisticated data structures in the world to power industry-leading decision-making.

No two days are the same. This is a role where you will be challenged and have the platform to flex your skills and make significant impact in a fast-paced, collaborative and high-impact team environment.

Responsibilities

Partner with one of the world’s most significant clients to deliver large-scale digital transformation programmes, designing and governing bespoke data solutions with Engineering, BI and Data Excellence teams.

Lead a multi faceting Engineering and Business Intelligence team to design, consult and govern data pipelines using Adverity, dbt and SQL within a fully AWS-native environment (including Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift), supporting ingestion, transformation and modelling of OpenDoor’s advertising to ensure data outputs are accurate, well-structured and aligned to business and client requirements.

Work across internal, OpenDoor specific data teams including BI, Data Excellence, Activation, Client Service and Planning, to understand requirements and enable their delivery through technology systems

Develop / apply expertise in WPP Media’s internal tooling and advertising data landscape to orchestrate the most efficient solution architecture.

Scope, communicate and ensure best practice documentation of solution architecture to a wide range of audiences, translating business strategy and requirements into scalable, integrated designs.

Qualifications

Proven experience as a solution architecture or engineering leader in a media data and technology environment, specialising in data management, data quality and scalable data platforms.

Respected and accountable leader who takes ownership for ensuring deadlines and quality is met at all times.

Hands-on experience with data transformation tools such as dbt, data ingestion tools such as Adverity, or equivalent platforms. AWS cloud data services, specifically Amazon Redshift, with exposure to related services such as Amazon S3.

Clear and confident communicator with strong stakeholder management and negotiation abilities, able to collaborate effectively with technical and non-technical colleagues across cross-functional account teams, markets and business functions.

Experience with advertising, marketing or media campaign data, digital ad serving technologies or web analytics platforms.

Preferred Qualifications

Leadership of query optimisation techniques within Amazon Redshift to improve pipeline performance and efficiency.

Code review processes and version control tools such as Git.

Familiarity with Agile/SCRUM methodologies.

Strong SQL skills for data manipulation, transformation and analysis, with an understanding of best practices and optimisation approaches

Life At WPP Media & Benefits

Our passion for shaping the next era of media is powered by our commitment to Be Extraordinary, investing in our employees to inspire transformational creativity. We also Lead Optimistically, firmly believing in and Championing Growth and Development for every individual. This commitment allows WPP Media employees to leverage the extensive global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, build vital professional connections, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising.

We Create an Open environment built on trust and respect, where everyone feels they belong and has opportunities to progress. This inclusive culture is fostered through a variety of employee resource groups and frequent in-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events. Our comprehensive benefits package reflects this commitment, including competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days.

WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection in this open and supportive environment. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.  Please note that while our philosophy is the same across WPP, benefits may vary by office/country.

Please note this is a UK based role and requires individuals to have the right to work in this location

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While we appreciate all applications received, only those candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Please read our Privacy Notice for more information on how we process the information you provide.