---
title: 'Senior Director - Data Platform and Cloud Services at Samba'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-director-data-platform-and-cloud-services-samba-warsaw-vnpe99twtfcg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Senior Director - Data Platform and Cloud Services at Samba

- **Company:** Samba
- **Location:** Warsaw, Poland
- **Compensation:** PLN 580k–PLN 682k
- **Employment:** internship
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/sambatv/5caaf5b6-c5bf-4e48-afab-a25a656a921d

## Job description

Samba is a media intelligence company. We know what the world is watching, reading, and thinking about — in real time, at scale, across every screen. Our data exists with the consent of over a billion people, organized into the most complete picture of consumer attention ever built. The biggest brands in the world use that picture to make smarter decisions. We think it’s the most interesting data asset on the planet, because it’s the most culturally relevant.

What you’ll do:

Strategic Leadership

- Define and execute a transformative vision for our data platform architecture that scales to billions of daily events

- Partner with CTO and engineering leadership to align platform strategy with business objectives

- Drive adoption of next-generation technologies including vector databases and ML-powered analytics

- Build strategic roadmaps that balance innovation with operational excellence

Technical Architecture

- Lead the evolution from current state to a modern, cloud-native data platform with embedded ML/AI capabilities

- Work with the team to deliver fault-tolerant, multi-region architectures supporting real-time and batch processing

- Build and maintain the services, platforms, and frameworks enabling Samba’s data engineering teams

- Architect embedding-based systems for content understanding, viewer similarity, and semantic search

- Deliver  infrastructure for vector storage, indexing, and retrieval at scale (billions of embeddings)

- Champion best practices in data governance, security, and compliance (GDPR, CCPA)

- Evaluate and implement emerging technologies (streaming architectures, lakehouse patterns, ML platforms)

ML/AI Infrastructure

- Design platforms for embedding generation, storage, and serving at scale

- Implement vector search capabilities for real-time recommendations and content discovery

- Build infrastructure supporting multimodal embeddings (video, audio, text metadata)

- Enable self-service ML capabilities for data scientists and analysts

- Establish MLOps practices for embedding model lifecycle management

## Team & Organizational Development

- Build and mentor a world-class team of platform engineers, ML engineers, and architects

- Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous learning

- Establish clear career paths and growth opportunities for team members

- Drive cross-functional collaboration with data science, product, and engineering teams

Operational Excellence

- Establish SLAs and monitoring frameworks for internal and external clients

- Provide observability tools for Data Engineering and Data Science, including tools to enforce data quality

- Lead vendor relationships and technology partnerships

- Drive automation and self-service capabilities for internal customers

Who you are:

- 12+ years in data platform/infrastructure roles, with 5+ years in senior leadership

- Proven track record of leading large-scale platform transformations

- Experience building production embedding systems and vector databases

- History of building and scaling teams of 20+ engineers

- Deep expertise in modern data architectures (data mesh, lakehouse, streaming-first)

- Proficiency with, Stream processing (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming), Modern data warehouses/lakes (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery), Workflow management (Airflow, etc), Container orchestration (Kubernetes, EKS/GKE), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation), ML platforms (MLflow, Kubeflow, SageMaker)

- Exceptional communication skills to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences

- Strategic thinking with ability to balance long-term vision with short-term deliverables

- Strong business acumen to connect technical decisions with business outcomes

- Track record of influencing without authority across organizational boundaries

- Knowledge of privacy-preserving analytics and clean room technologies

- Contributions to open-source projects in ML infrastructure or vector search

- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field

## About Samba

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Samba (formerly Samba TV) is a media intelligence company that uses AI and first-party deterministic data from 1.5 billion people to power cross-screen TV and digital advertising measurement, targeting, and analytics for the world's largest brands, publishers, and platforms.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2008
- **Founders**: Ashwin Navin (Co-founder & CEO), Alvir Navin (Co-founder & COO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Media Intelligence / Advertising Technology / Data & Analytics
- **Target Customers**: B2B — primarily Enterprise (global brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms like Disney, Havas Media, and "the vast majority of top global brands")
- **Mission Statement**: Unite TV, digital, and behavioral data through AI to power faster, more accurate media decisions.

## Products & Services
- **Samba Analytics**: Independent cross-screen measurement using first-party data for deduplicated reach, frequency, and performance outcomes. Allows optimization of campaigns while they are still in-flight.
- **Samba Audiences**: Exclusive audience segments and Private Marketplaces (PMPs) built from Samba's deterministic cross-screen signals for effective targeting.
- **Samba Knowledge Graph**: AI-powered mapping of interests, behaviors, and purchase intent, linking content to 1.5 billion real people, devices, and households.
- **Samba ID**: A universal identity solution linking content to real people and devices across screens.
- **Samba AI**: Contextually analyzes and indexes all media content, including brand logo detection on TV.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $75.7M USD across 9 rounds
    - Last known round: Series B ($30M, June 2017, led by Union Grove Venture Partners and Disney Accelerator)
    - Other notable rounds: Series A ($7M, February 2012, led by August Capital)
- **Key Metric**: Owns first-party TV and web data for 1.5 billion people globally.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: August Capital, Union Grove Venture Partners, Disney Accelerator. Strategic clients include Disney, Havas Media, and "every platform and publisher you need."
- **Growth Signals**: Acquired Semasio in 2024, becoming the only provider owning both TV and web first-party data. Rebranded from "Samba TV" to "Samba" in 2026. Global workforce of 251 employees (+20.1% YoY growth). Operations span 6 countries with 13 offices.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-Party Data Moat**: Nearly two decades of proprietary, deterministic data from smart TVs (24 brands, 48M devices) and web (1.5B people), creating a unique and un-copyable dataset.
- **Full-Funnel Integration**: The only provider to combine TV and web first-party data (after acquiring Semasio), offering planning, measurement, and activation in one platform.
- **AI-Powered Knowledge Graph**: Goes beyond traditional media measurement by mapping interests, behaviors, and purchase intent, enabling contextual analysis without relying on third-party cookies.

## Strategic Focus
- **Platform Expansion**: Evolving from a TV data provider into a comprehensive "media intelligence" company (rebranded in 2026).
- **Cross-Screen Unification**: Connecting TV and digital data to provide a complete view of audience behavior across all screens.
- **AI & Contextual Intelligence**: Deepening investment in AI for content analysis, brand detection, and predictive audience targeting.
- **Global Scale**: Operating across six continents and expanding direct partnerships with major platforms and publishers.

## Why Work Here
- **Founder-Led Culture**: Described as having "startup intensity and enterprise impact," with a "culture that values ownership over hierarchy and outcomes over optics."
- **Global & Distributed**: Teams span San Francisco (HQ), New York, London, Hamburg, Sydney, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Warsaw, Taipei, and Amsterdam. Officed with a global, collaborative ethos.
- **Engineering & Data-First**: Ships products that "touch billions of signals daily." A strong emphasis on data science, engineering, and product roles.
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Competitive base salary, equity participation, performance bonuses, generous parental leave, flexible PTO, annual learning budgets, home office stipend, and best-in-class hardware.
- **Culture Values** (from company career page): Determined & Resilient, Self-Aware, Naturally Curious, Low Ego, Results Oriented.
- **Employee Rating**: 3.9/5.0 on LinkedIn (172 reviews), with Work-Life Balance at 3.9, Compensation at 3.8, and Culture at 3.8.

## Sources
1. [samba.com](https://samba.com/about-samba) — About Samba / Company History
2. [samba.com](https://samba.com/careers) — Careers Page / Culture & Benefits
3. [samba.com](https://samba.com/) — Home Page / Product & Platform Overview
4. [linkedin.com/company/sambatv](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sambatv) — LinkedIn Profile (Company Details, Size, Financials)
5. [jobs.lever.co/sambatv](https://jobs.lever.co/sambatv) — Lever Careers Page (Open Roles)

## Other roles at Samba

- [Senior Ontologist - Knowledge Graph & Identity](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ontologist-knowledge-graph-identity-samba-warsaw-maadbvvzpzgv) — Warsaw, Poland
- [Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-samba-amsterdam-cq236q9e9445) — Amsterdam, Netherlands
- [Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-samba-warsaw-11hwb6kajyaz) — Warsaw, Poland
- [Software Development Engineer in Test](https://feeny.ai/job/software-development-engineer-in-test-samba-porto-6qf6nra7fhpa) — Porto, Portugal
- [Associate Measurement Partner](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-measurement-partner-samba-london-yknw975zv4zy) — London, United Kingdom
- [Programmatic Account Manager - German Speaking](https://feeny.ai/job/programmatic-account-manager-german-speaking-samba-london-afavw00gcd6v) — London, United Kingdom
- [Full Stack Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-samba-san-francisco-5fr298dp4qwq) — San Francisco, CA
- [Workplace Experience Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/workplace-experience-coordinator-samba-new-york-city-zbwn6na20a0g) — New York City, NY
- [Principal Engineer, Architecture — Audiences & Measurement](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-engineer-architecture-audiences-measurement-samba-austin-97bw5v1r7h3d) — Austin, TX
- [Principal, Insights & Innovation](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-insights-innovation-samba-chicago-sb1j6490eazc) — Chicago, IL