Data Operations Manager

Brief Description

Integrity. Care. Trust. Compassion. Expertise.

Do these words resonate with you?

These values of Builders culture create success in all we do. We strive to provide deeply supportive partnerships to our customers, agents, and each other.

Builders is proud to be named among the Great Places to Work. Our award-winning culture has earned top marks in Company Direction, Employee Appreciation, Work-Life Balance, Leadership, and Compensation and Benefits. Our strong culture keeps us Built Strong in a forever-changing world, and our AM Best A Rating is evidence of our financial strength.

Position Summary

The Data Operations Manager is responsible for ensuring the stability, reliability, and governance of Builders’ enterprise data platform, enabling trusted, high-quality data and supporting the organization’s evolving business needs. This role oversees the operational excellence of the data environment, including production support, platform administration, data governance, and the overall health and performance of analytics systems.

In addition, the Data Operations Manager provides architectural guidance with a focus on platform resilience, governance, scalability, and long-term sustainability. The role also includes direct leadership and development of the production support team, fostering a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and service excellence.

Responsibilities

• Lead the production support team; create clear direction, accountability, SLAs, on-call rotations, and escalation procedures.
• Serve as the senior escalation point for critical production data incidents; lead triage, root cause analysis, and resolution across engineering, infrastructure, and vendor teams.
• Develop and maintain monitoring and alerting processes across all data pipelines and platform services to enable proactive identification and resolution of issues.
• Provide after-hours support for critical incidents and release escalations in collaboration with on-call engineers.
• Recruit, hire, train, mentor, and evaluate production support staff and data platform engineers; build teams aligned with the organization’s values and the demands of the modernization roadmap.
• Assess current team capabilities, close skill gaps through coaching and development, and mature the production support function in step with the broader platform evolution.
• Lead daily stand-up meetings, fostering communication and alignment across the team.
• Maintain and prioritize a backlog of production issues, platform enhancements, and migration workstreams; collaborate with leadership and colleagues to align delivery with business priorities.
• Oversee team accountability for project management, departmental status updates, and stakeholder communications.
• Contribute to solution architecture decisions in partnership with leadership colleagues representing platform stability, governance, and operational sustainability.
• Stay current on DataOps practices, cloud platform capabilities, and relevant industry regulations through ongoing professional development.
• Serve as the senior hands-on SQL Server administrator for the organization’s enterprise data warehouse; maintain, tune, and support all SQL Server instances, databases, stored procedures, and ETL processes across development, test, and production environments.
• Manage database availability and recovery across all environments; maintain and test backup and restore procedures, high-availability configurations, and disaster recovery plans to ensure continuity of critical data services.
• Enforce SQL Server security best practices across all environments, including login and role management, permission models, auditing, and compliance controls appropriate to a regulated insurance environment.
• Administer SQL Server in a production enterprise environment, including instance configuration, maintenance plans, and ongoing performance tuning.
• Maintain and refactor complex T-SQL stored procedures and SSIS-based ETL pipelines, ensuring performance, accuracy, and long-term supportability.
• Oversee integrations between financial systems and insurance platforms (e.g., Guidewire, Great Plains), ensuring the accuracy, availability, and timeliness of financial close processes.
• Maintain a comprehensive financial reporting calendar and ensure data delivery commitments are consistently met.
• Administer and operate the Databricks Data Lakehouse as the target platform, ensuring reliability, performance, security, and availability for all downstream analytics and reporting consumers.
• Manage Unity Catalog, workspace configuration, cluster policies, access controls, and cost governance within the Databricks environment.
• Maintain and optimize medallion-layer pipelines, Delta tables, and data quality frameworks as the platform assumes production workloads from the SQL Server environment.
• Establish and enforce platform standards, deployment patterns, and operational runbooks that support a sustainable, well-governed Databricks environment.
• Monitor platform health, usage, and performance; identify and resolve bottlenecks proactively to maintain SLAs for downstream consumers.
• Lead the migration of the organization’s SQL Server data warehouse to a Databricks Data Lakehouse, serving as the program’s primary technical owner and delivery lead.
• Develop and execute a phased migration roadmap that bridges the SQL Server and Databricks environments, preserves business continuity, protects existing reporting and analytics consumers, and delivers measurable value at each stage of the transition.
• Design and implement a medallion architecture (bronze, silver, gold) in Databricks, establishing ingestion, transformation, quality, and consumption patterns that will govern the target platform long-term.
• Evaluate and integrate supporting Azure data services — including Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse, and Azure Purview — as components of the broader lakehouse ecosystem.
• Establish DataOps practices including CI/CD for data pipelines, automated data quality testing, and version-controlled deployment standards that apply across both platforms during and after the transition.
• Oversee the operational health of enterprise analytics and reporting platforms (e.g., ThoughtSpot, Logi Info), including semantic layers, RBAC policy configuration, and end-user access.
• Partner with colleagues to ensure the data platform reliably supports self-service analytics, standardized definitions, and business-unit reporting needs throughout and beyond the migration.
• Drive improvements in data quality, pipeline efficiency, and platform performance that enhance the speed and accuracy of business decision-making.
• Implement and operate enterprise data governance capabilities including data catalog, lineage tracking, domain ownership, and metadata standards across both SQL Server and Databricks environments, leveraging platforms such as Azure Purview.
• Design and maintain automated controls for data privacy, access management (RBAC), and retention policies that span the full platform lifecycle — from legacy warehouse to cloud-native lakehouse.
• Ensure ongoing alignment with applicable regulatory frameworks including SOX, GDPR, and NAIC requirements relevant to commercial property and casualty insurance.
• Enforce accuracy, consistency, and protection of sensitive data across customer policy, financial, and fraud investigation datasets.
• Perform other duties as assigned.
  
  

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems, Computer Science, a math-related discipline, or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Five or more years of hands-on SQL Server administration of large databases in a high-availability, production enterprise environment, including advanced proficiency in T-SQL, stored procedure development and refactoring, query performance tuning, and index management
• Two or more years of experience in a senior or lead technical role that included direct guidance, mentorship, or management of engineers, including experience leading or participating in a production support function; experience owning database availability and recovery, including backup and restore operations, high-availability configuration, and disaster recovery planning across multiple environments
• Knowledge of SQL Server security best practices, including permission models, role management, auditing, and compliance controls in a regulated environment
• Ability to design and operate SSIS-based ETL pipelines across multiple development environments
• Knowledge of Databricks platform administration — including familiarity with Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, medallion architecture, and cloud-native ETL/ELT patterns
• Skill in production support operations including SLA management, incident response, on-call coordination, and root cause analysis for enterprise data systems
• Knowledge of relational and dimensional database principles and data warehousing practices
• Skill in estimation, prioritization, organization, and time management with attention to detail; ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams accurately
• Skill in verbal and written communications; able to present complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences while maintaining confidentiality
• Skill in interpersonal interactions with the ability to collaborate across all organizational levels and with external stakeholders and vendors
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision
• Proficient with Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Windows Server platform, and other function-specific applications
  
  

Preferred

• Hands-on Databricks administration experience, including Unity Catalog configuration, cluster policy management, Delta Live Tables, and workspace governance
• Experience designing and executing a data warehouse to data lakehouse migration, including medallion architecture implementation and phased workload transition
• Familiarity with DataOps practices including CI/CD pipelines for data engineering, automated data quality testing, and version-controlled pipeline deployment
• Experience with Azure Purview or equivalent enterprise data catalog and lineage tooling
• Experience in commercial property and casualty insurance or financial services data environments (e.g., Guidewire) or other regulated industry data platforms
• Familiarity with enterprise analytics platforms such as ThoughtSpot or Logi Info, including semantic layer and RBAC configuration
• Proficiency with Python for data pipeline development, automation, or platform scripting
  
  

Let’s talk benefits!

• Competitive Salary
• Bonus Structure
• Profit Sharing
• Medical, Dental, Vision Insurance
• Employer Paid Short Term Disability
• Employer Paid Long Term Disability
• Employer Paid Life Insurance
• Voluntary Life Insurance
• 401K with Company Match
• PTO
  
  

About Builders

Builders is a mid-sized mutual with remarkable strengths. Rated A by AM Best, Builders has forged rock-solid financial strength and a reputation for reliability and fairness in fulfilling our promises to customers. Kind, collaborative, and customer-centric, our experienced and passionate teams foster a rewarding atmosphere of excellence, trust, and mutual respect, meriting the “Culture Excellence” honors from Top Workplaces. Flexible and highly personal, our experts leverage deeply supportive partnerships with knowledgeable independent agencies to drive better services and protection for policyholders.

Our financial excellence, amazing people, and powerful partnerships build outstanding outcomes and peace of mind for our agents and their clients. This is what we mean by Insurance Built Strong®.

Builders Insurance Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We welcome applicants from all walks of life and don't discriminate based on any protected status. Join us in creating a diverse and inclusive workplace! If, during the application process you need assistance, or an accommodation due to a disability, please contact peopleops@bldrs.com.