Data Platforms Technical Support Manager

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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

- 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.