Mgr, Data Platform Engineering

University Federal Credit Union (UFCU) is seeking a Manager, Data Platform Engineering to lead a technical team to deliver UFCU’s enterprise data platform. This includes a portfolio of data products, pipelines, and curated datasets that power analytics, reporting, AI initiatives, and data-driven decision-making across the organization.

Reporting to the Director of Platform Engineering, this is a technical leadership role that blends people management with technical and operational accountability. You will be responsible for platform governance, product delivery execution, and platform operations.

The team operates using agile methodologies, partnering closely with the Data & Analytics, and other business stakeholders to deliver best in class data products. Core responsibilities include:

• Data Ingestion & Integration: ingesting data from key banking and operational source systems into the enterprise data platform on a reliable, repeatable cadence.
• Data Engineering & Quality: cleaning, transforming, and curating data using Databricks and the Medallion architecture; building data products that business teams can trust and self-serve.
• Platform Operations: monitoring pipelines for failures, ensuring data freshness and quality, and maintaining the stability and performance of the data platform.
• Database Administration: overseeing a DBA function responsible for SQL Server health, performance, and reliability across a mix of on-prem and managed Azure SQL Server instances.

This role supports a hybrid work model with 2 days per week on-site at the UFCU Plaza building and manages a core team in addition to contractors dependent on the projects.

• Lead a data platform engineering team, delivering reliable, secure, reusable data products, pipelines, and curated datasets that enable key analytics and business outcomes.
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership including:
• Data architecture understanding, technical design guidance, and engineering sign‑off for ingestion pipelines, transformations, and data products
• Establishing and maintaining reference architectures, data modeling standards, and engineering best practices
• Own the data platform roadmap and governance, including:
• Data product design standards, documentation, versioning, and SDLC
• Data quality, lineage, cataloging, and access governance via Databricks Unity Catalog
• Consistent patterns for ingestion, transformation, error handling, and pipeline resiliency
• Guide data engineering delivery and operations on Databricks, including:
• Medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold), notebook and job orchestration, and reusable data assets
• Performance tuning, cost optimization, release readiness, and operational stability
• CI/CD pipelines, automated testing strategies, and secure SDLC quality gates
• Oversee database administration across the SQL Server environments, including:
• Performance tuning, indexing, backup/recovery, high availability, patching, and capacity and cost planning across on‑prem and managed Azure SQL Server instances
• Coaching and directing the DBA’s
• Ensure data reliability and operational excellence by:
• Monitoring for pipeline failures, establishing incident response practices, runbooks, and post‑incident reviews
• Observability practices: pipeline monitoring, data quality checks, dashboards, and alerts
• Defining and tracking SLAs/SLOs, data freshness, MTTR, reliability trends, and capacity planning
• Embed security and compliance into engineering practices, partnering with Security/Risk/Compliance to ensure:
• Secure data access patterns, secrets management, encryption at rest/in transit, least privilege, and Unity Catalog access controls
• Audit readiness (change management, evidence collection, and operational controls)
• Enable internal teams, analytics partners, and AI initiatives by delivering:
• A clear, well‑documented catalog of data products and onboarding documentation
• Supportable consumption patterns for Power BI reporting and downstream analytics and AI teams
• Partnership and collaboration with key stakeholders to define and deliver prioritized data products
• Manage delivery execution and team operations, including:
• Participation in Agile ceremonies, and manage…