Mgr, Data Platform Engineering

University Federal Credit Union (UFCU) is seeking a Manager, Data Platform Engineering to lead, coach, and develop a team of data engineers and database administrators responsible for delivering 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.

About the role

Reporting to the Director of Platform Engineering, this is a technical leadership role that blends people leadership with technical and operational accountability. You will build and lead a high-performing engineering team through hiring, coaching, mentoring, performance management, career development, and succession planning. The 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 projects.

About UFCU

Our Credit Union was founded in 1936 and has grown to serve members throughout Texas and beyond. At UFCU, we are more than just a financial institution, and our people are more than just employees. We are dedicated to our purpose of empowering our Members to achieve financial success and build brighter futures. Guided by our values, we pursue our aspiration that UFCU is loved by millions of members and built to thrive for generations.

• Purposefully Member-Obsessed: We are driven by empathy to understand our Members’ needs and act in their best interests.
• Possibilities Reimagined: We courageously experiment, learn, and iterate, embracing diverse perspectives and data-driven insights.
• Performance Excellence Rooted in Unwavering Integrity: We champion teamwork, accountability, and continuous improvement, fostering an inclusive environment of excellence.

Responsibilities

• Data Ingestion & Integration: Ingest data from key banking and operational source systems into the enterprise data platform on a reliable, repeatable cadence.
• Data Engineering & Quality: Clean, transform, and curate data using Databricks and the Medallion architecture; build data products that business teams can trust and self-serve.
• Platform Operations: Monitor pipelines for failures, ensure data freshness and quality, and maintain the stability and performance of the data platform.
• Database Administration: Oversee a DBA function responsible for SQL Server health, performance, and reliability across a mix of on-prem and managed Azure SQL Server instances.
• Technical Leadership:
  • Provide hands-on technical leadership, including data architecture, technical design guidance, and engineering sign-off for pipelines and data products.
  • Establish and maintain 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.
  • Guide data engineering delivery and operations on Databricks (Medallion architecture, notebook/job orchestration, performance tuning, cost optimization).
  • Oversee CI/CD pipelines, automated testing strategies, and secure SDLC quality gates.
• Data Reliability & Observability:
  • Monitor for pipeline failures, establish incident response practices, runbooks, and post-incident reviews.
  • Define and track SLAs/SLOs, data freshness, MTTR, reliability trends, and capacity planning.
  • Implement observability practices: pipeline monitoring, data quality checks, dashboards, and alerts.
• Security & Compliance:
  • Embed security and compliance into engineering practices (secure data access, encryption, least privilege, Unity Catalog access controls).
  • Ensure audit readiness (change management, evidence collection, operational controls).
• Stakeholder Enablement:
  • Deliver a clear, well-documented catalog of data products and onboarding documentation.
  • Support consumption patterns for Power BI reporting, analytics, and AI teams.
  • Partner with stakeholders to define and deliver prioritized data products.
• Team Leadership & Development:
  • Lead, inspire, motivate, and mentor team members to attain departmental and individual development goals.
  • Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
  • Plan, monitor, and appraise job results with an emphasis on coaching and development.
  • Manage vendor/contractor relationships, including coordination of onshore/offshore teams.
• Budget & Expense Management:
  • Collaborate with senior leadership to establish and manage annual budgets for programs and services.
  • Pursue cost improvement opportunities to reduce capital and operational expenses.

Requirements

• 5+ years leading a platform engineering team, with demonstrated success in building high-performing teams, developing talent, and fostering collaboration.
• 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 on-prem and managed Azure SQL Server instances.
• Experience leading or directing a DBA function (performance tuning, high availability, backup/recovery).
• Demonstrated understanding of 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 and enabling business intelligence/data products for analysts and Power BI.
• Experience managing vendor or contractor resources, including offshore development teams.
• Willingness and ability to lead a 24/7 on-call rotation for the team.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Databricks Unity Catalog for data governance, lineage, and access control.
• Experience with Azure cloud services supporting data platforms (identity, secrets management, storage, monitoring).
• 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 management.

Skills

• Strong leadership capability with a platform mindset, building reusable, well-governed data products.
• Deep knowledge of data engineering best practices (data modeling, pipeline design, lifecycle management, governance).
• Solid understanding of ingestion and integration patterns (batch/incremental loads, retries, error handling).
• Expertise in modern lakehouse and distributed data concepts (Databricks, Spark, Medallion architecture, performance/cost efficiency).
• Established expertise in data observability (pipeline monitoring, data quality, lineage, alerting, dashboards).
• Database administration leadership across SQL Server (performance tuning, high availability, backup/recovery).
• Production support experience (incident response, RCA, continuous improvement).
• Practical knowledge of modern engineering practices (CI/CD, automated testing, security scanning, Azure DevOps/GitHub).
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, translating technical tradeoffs into business impact.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described are representative of those required for the role.