Job SummaryUniversity 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.
Essential Functions Technical Functions - 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 operational tasks on Azure DevOps Boards, prioritization, dependency management, and stakeholder communication
- Hiring, coaching, performance management, and vendor/contractor management, including coordination of onshore/offshore contractors
Team Leadership and Development - Lead, inspire, motivate, mentor, and develop team members by providing guidance and training to attain departmental and individual development goals and support organizational needs.
- Serve as a role model in transparent communication, two-way dialogue, and proactive communication to the team.
- Utilize a proactive, ethical, and consultative approach to build a successful and effective team to operate according to UFCU guiding principles, providing guidance and resources and removing obstacles as needed.
- Create an environment that builds, encourages, and rewards teamwork, collaboration, and delivering business value.
- Provide team leadership based on servant leadership principles, caring for the whole person.
- Plan, monitor, and appraise job results with an emphasis on coaching and developing employees to achieve desired performance results.
- Regularly consult with partners to determine team performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Help teams achieve their career goals. Ensure team members understand how to have an impact and are aware of that impact when they've made it.
- Embrace and promote a change-oriented and continuous process improvement culture.
Vendor and Contract Management - Manage vendor relationships with service partners.
- Oversee vendor and contract management of relevant third-party contractors.
- Manage and collaborate with third-party vendors, ensuring scope, quality, service levels, and key terms meet or exceed requirements.
Budget/Expense Development and Management - In collaboration with senior leadership and other department managers, establish annual budget with identification of planned expenses for new or enhanced programs and services.
- Ensure effective control of results. Take action to guarantee achievement of objectives that fall within designated budget.
- Actively pursue cost improvement opportunities to reduce capital costs, operational cost, and expenses.
Other - Adhere to all company policies, procedures, and business ethics codes.
- Complete required regulatory training as assigned.
- Maintain strict adherence and compliance to all laws, rules, regulations, and internal controls specific to the role, including but not limited to Bank Secrecy Act, Anti-Money Laundering, USA Patriot Act, OFAC and Fair Lending regulations.
Knowledge / Skills / Abilities - Strong leadership capability with a platform mindset, building reusable, well-governed data products that enable your stakeholders.
- Deep knowledge of data engineering best practices, including: Data modeling (dimensional and Medallion approaches), pipeline design, lifecycle management, data quality, and governance
- Solid understanding of ingestion and integration patterns, including batch and incremental loads, retries, error handling, and pipeline resiliency.
- Working expertise in modern lakehouse and distributed data concepts: Databricks, Spark-based processing, the Medallion architecture, data ownership considerations, performance, cost efficiency, and scalability
- Established expertise in data observability practices, including: Pipeline and data quality monitoring, data freshness and lineage tracking, alerting, and dashboards that surface failures and reliability trends
- Database administration leadership across SQL Server, including: Performance tuning, high availability, backup/recovery, and operations across on-prem and managed Azure SQL Server instances
- Production support, including: Pipeline failure monitoring, incident response, escalation management, RCA's, and continuous improvement
- Practical knowledge of modern engineering practices: CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code quality gates, security scanning, and deployment strategies using Azure DevOps and GitHub
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills: Ability to translate technical tradeoffs into business impact and align key business stakeholders
Experience Minimum Requirements - 5+ years leading a platform engineering team (people management, delivery accountability, coaching/development).
- Hands-on experience building and operating data pipelines and data products in production environments.
- Proven experience with Databricks, including Spark-based transformation, job orchestration, and the Medallion architecture.
- Strong SQL skills and experience with SQL Server, including oversight of both on-prem and managed Azure SQL Server instances.
- Experience leading or directing a DBA function, including performance, availability, and operational support.
- Demonstrated experience understanding data architecture and data modeling concepts.
- Experience implementing data observability, pipeline monitoring, data quality checks, lineage, and alerting.
- Experience ingesting data from core operational/source systems into a centralized data platform.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and source control.
- Experience working in an agile environment.
- Experience enabling business intelligence and data products used by Analysts and PowerBI.
- Experience managing vendor or contractor resources, including offshore development teams.
- Willingness and ability to lead a 24/7 on-call rotation comprised of the team members.
Preferred Requirements - Hands-on experience with Databricks Unity Catalog for data governance, lineage, and access control.
- Experience with Azure cloud services supporting data platforms (e.g., identity, secrets management, storage, monitoring, and data services).
- Experience with enterprise data models and reference architectures across multiple business domains.
- Experience in financial services or another regulated environment with strong security/compliance expectations.
- Experience scaling delivery with a mix of FTE and contractor resources, including offshore vendor/contract management.
Physical Demands The physical demands described are representative of those that must be met by an employee, with or without accommodation, to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
- While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle or feel; reach with hands and arms; and talk or hear.
- Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, and ability to adjust focus.
- Employee will make extensive use of the telephone and virtual communications requiring the ability to explain complex information effectively and accurately.
Work Environment The work environment characteristics described are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job.
- This position requires frequently working onsite at UFCU Plaza in Austin, Texas.
- This position may involve periodic stressful conditions.
- May occasionally require an adjusted work schedule, overtime, and evening/weekend hours.
- May occasionally move from one work location/branch to another.
- Public contact position, requiring appropriate professional appearance.
- Frequent computer use at a workstation of up to two hours at a time.
- The noise level in the work envir
