Data Platforms Technical Support Manager

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.