Overview:
Waters is seeking a highly skilled Data Platforms Technical Support Manager to lead our Tier 1 global support operations and govern our enterprise Databricks platform. This role combines team leadership, operational excellence, and deep technical ownership of SAP Datasphere, Microsoft Azure Databricks Administration, Unity Catalog governance, , and Power BI.
The ideal candidate has 10+ years of total experience with 5+ years in leadership or management roles, plus strong hands-on Datasphere & Databricks administration (clusters, governance, compute, Terraform, Unity Catalog). You will ensure uptime, performance, and secure operations across our Data & Analytics ecosystem while mentoring a global team supporting a 24/7 environment.
Responsibilities:
* Team Leadership & Management
* Lead, coach, and mentor a global team of L2 Technical Support Engineers.
* Manage 24/7 operations including shift schedules, staffing, and on-call rotations.
* Implement and enforce SOPs for incident management, escalations, and troubleshooting.
* Track KPIs/SLA compliance while driving continuous service improvement.
* Act as the highest-tier escalation point for business‑critical issues.
* Datasphere & Databricks Platform Administration (Senior-Level Ownership)
* Administer and maintain Datasphere & Databricks workspaces across development, staging, and production.
* Manage clusters, jobs, permissions, workspace configurations, and compute governance.
* Partner with engineering, analytics, and data science teams to ensure stable and scalable compute.
* Troubleshoot complex Databricks issues across jobs, clusters, permissions, networks, and UC.
* Unity Catalog Governance & Security
* Design, implement, and maintain enterprise-wide Unity Catalog governance structures.
* Manage fine-grained access for catalogs, schemas, tables, volumes, functions, and views.
* Enforce least-privilege access models using groups, service principals, and RBAC.
* Support permission audits, access reviews, classification standards, and compliance workflows.
* Maintain clear governance around ownership, lineage, and auditability.
* Terraform & Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
* Use Terraform to deploy and manage Databricks infrastructure and configurations.
* Manage cluster policies, compute controls, Unity Catalog objects, and security bindings via IaC.
* Ensure Terraform modules follow best practices (modularity, versioning, state management).
* Collaborate with DevOps teams to integrate Terraform into CI/CD pipelines.
* Compute Policies & Cost Governance
* Design and enforce Databricks compute policies for security, cost control, and standardization.
* Monitor workloads, optimize performance, and reduce unnecessary cluster spend.
* Drive platform-wide consistency in cluster configurations and compute governance.
* Technical Expertise Across the Data Platforms Stack
* Provide advanced incident triage and resolution for Azure, SAP, Databricks, and Power BI.
* Support Microsoft Azure components (ADF, Storage, Networking, Monitoring).
* Troubleshoot SAP S/4HANA/BDC and SAP Datasphere performance or integration issues.
* Support Power BI issues such as dataset refresh failures, gateway configuration, and performance tuning.
* Work with engineering teams to conduct root cause analysis and implement permanent fixes.
* Recruitment & Talent Development
* Recruit high-performing engineers with Data Platforms, Databricks, and cloud expertise.
* Define onboarding roadmaps, skill matrices, and continuous learning strategies.
* Identify competency gaps and drive certification and upskilling programs.
Qualifications:
* 10+ years of experience in technical support, cloud operations, or data platform management.
* 5+ years in a leadership or management role overseeing technical teams.
* 5+ years' experience administering Databricks in enterprise production environments.
* Strong expertise in:
* SAP Platform: SAP Datasphere, S/4HANA/BDC, SAC.
* Databricks Administration: clusters, jobs, permissions, compute governance, monitoring.
* Unity Catalog: advanced permissions, governance, lineage, auditing.
* Terraform: Databricks provisioning, access bindings, policies, UC objects.
* Power BI: Service, Gateway, Desktop, dataflows.
* Microsoft Azure: ADF, Storage, VMs, Networking.
* Strong knowledge of IAM, security governance, and enterprise data controls.
* Experience managing multi-team shared data platforms in a global support environment.
* Proficiency with ITIL, ServiceNow/Jira, and operational processes.
Preferred / Nice-to-Have
* Experience working in regulated industries or environments with strict governance.
* CI/CD experience for infrastructure and data platforms.
* Experience with Databricks cost optimization strategies.
* Background in data engineering, cloud engineering, or analytics platforms.
* Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
What Success Looks Like
* Unity Catalog permissions are clean, secure, and easy to manage.
* Databricks compute policies are standardized and cost‑efficient.
* Terraform is fully adopted for governing Databricks infrastructure.
* Platform uptime and performance metrics consistently meet SLAs.
* L2 team is highly skilled, autonomous, and continuously improving.
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