Data Platforms Manager & Architecture

Leads the data platform team and provides solution architecture for Conagra's enterprise data platforms, including Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and Snowflake. Acts as a player-coach who builds and develops a team to run these platforms reliably and cost-effectively while personally shaping the designs that matter most. Translates business and analytics needs into secure, scalable data solutions, and advises business partners on which platform and pattern best fits each use case.

Collaborates with the Enterprise Architect, Build Teams, and business partners to implement enterprise data and platform standards. Works with managed services providers and system integrators to deliver high-value projects and continuously improve efficiency and cost.

• Leads, develops, and manages the data platform team, including hiring, performance management, capacity planning, and career growth
• This is a hands‑on role. Expect to spend roughly 30-40% of your time in code, configuration, and troubleshooting: building prototypes, reviewing pull requests, and resolving platform issues alongside the team.
• Owns the platform's infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD, including Terraform for work spaces, catalogs and permissions, Databricks Asset Bundles or equivalent deployment tooling, and Git-based promotion across environment
• Provides solution architecture for data platform workloads, guiding platform selection across Databricks, Fabric, and Snowflake based on workload, cost, and security needs, and setting design direction for the team and Build Teams within enterprise standards
• Implements reference architectures, data modeling approaches, and integration patterns consistent with standards defined by the Enterprise Architect. Builds working proofs of concept in code (SQL, PySpark, Terraform) to validate designs before Build Teams commit. Reviews pull requests and pipeline designs, not just architecture documents
• Provides technical guidance to Build Teams through design reviews and solution sign-off, and validates approaches through hands‑on prototyping
• Applies access, catalog, and data governance standards across platforms (e.g., Unity Catalog, Fabric workspace and capacity design, Snowflake account and role design)
• Implements and tunes cost controls such as Databricks cluster/compute policies and budget alerts, Snowflake warehouse sizing, auto-suspend and resource monitors, and Fabric capacity sizing and throttling management
• Designs data movement and sharing patterns across platforms to reduce duplication and keep business logic and KPIs consistent
• Partners with business and IT leaders to prioritize the platform roadmap and communicate platform capabilities, tradeoffs, and timelines
• Manages technical relationships with platform vendors, managed services providers, and system integrators

• 8+ years of experience in data architecture, data engineering, or solution architecture, or equivalent experience
• 3+ years of experience leading technical teams, with a track record of developing engineers and architects
• Deep, recent hands‑on experience administering and building on Databricks, Fabric, or Snowflake. You should be able to show work you personally built: pipelines, permission models, IaC modules, or performance tuning.
• Experience designing lakehouse, warehouse, and semantic layer architectures, including medallion and dimensional modeling approaches
• Strong understanding of data governance, security, and access control in a multi‑platform environment
• Advanced SQL and working proficiency in Python/PySpark. Able to read, write, and performance‑tune production code
• Infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform preferred) and CI/CD for data platform deployment
• Experience applying consumption‑based cost…