Data Platforms Technical Support Manager

Job Description

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.

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

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• Experience working in regulated industries or environments with strict governance.
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• CI/CD experience for infrastructure and data platforms.
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• Experience with Databricks cost optimization strategies.
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• Background in data engineering, cloud engineering, or analytics platforms.
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• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
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What Success Looks Like

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• Unity Catalog permissions are clean, secure, and easy to manage.
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• Databricks compute policies are standardized and cost‑efficient.
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• Terraform is fully adopted for governing Databricks infrastructure.
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• Platform uptime and performance metrics consistently meet SLAs.
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• L2 team is highly skilled, autonomous, and continuously improving.
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