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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Company Description

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) is a global leader in life sciences and diagnostics, dedicated to accelerating the benefits of pioneering science through analytical technologies, informatics, and service. With a focus on regulated, high-volume testing environments, our innovative portfolio harnesses deep scientific expertise across chemistry, physics, and biology. We collaborate with customers around the world to advance the release of effective, high-quality medicines, ensure the safety of food and water, and drive better patient outcomes by detecting diseases earlier, managing routine infections, and combating antibiotic resistance. Through a shared culture of relentless innovation, our passionate team of ~16,000 colleagues turn scientific challenges into breakthroughs that improve lives worldwide.

Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our core values at Waters Corporation. It benefits our employees, our products, our customers and our community. Waters complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws. Qualified applicants are considered without regard to sex, race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, marital status (including civil unions), military service, veteran status, pregnancy (including childbirth and related medical conditions), genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, legally recognized disability, domestic violence victim status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Waters is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All hiring decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.