Data Platform Lead

Unilode Aviation

11h

About The Position

The Data Platform Lead is a senior technical leadership role accountable for the strategy, development, and performance of Unilode’s data platform infrastructure. This role oversees the design and operation of the company’s Databricks-based warehouse environment, enabling high-impact analytics, data science, and operational intelligence. The Data Platform Lead partners with cross-functional teams and executive stakeholders to ensure scalability, compliance, and efficiency, while driving platform innovation to meet evolving business needs. This is a senior technical role with broad strategic scope and cross-functional influence. It requires strong architectural knowledge, leadership presence, and the ability to bridge business needs with technical infrastructure. The role balances platform design, governance, optimisation, and stakeholder enablement. This job description outlines the scope and expectations of the role and its alignment with Unilode’s Band 3 competencies and values—it is not an exhaustive list of responsibilities.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or higher in Data Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
Proven experience in managing enterprise-scale data platforms.
Strong expertise in Databricks, Spark, and SQL performance optimisation.
Track record of leading infrastructure projects and cloud platform strategy at scale.
Deep understanding of platform cost management, DR strategy, and governance integration.
Experience working with Agile teams and delivering platform capabilities that support end users.
Ability to influence across functions and lead without direct authority.
Strong vendor management, stakeholder communication, and planning skills.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve the Databricks data platform strategy to align with analytics, product, and business priorities.
Design and operate data environments (DEV, STG, PROD) to support performance, governance, and scalability.
Act as the technical authority on data infrastructure decisions, aligning with long-term business goals.
Lead initiatives to consolidate data tools, modernise platform architecture, and reduce technical debt.
Partner with analytics engineers, data scientists, product owners, and commercial leaders to shape platform capability.
Translate business requirements into scalable platform features and infrastructure services.
Support education and enablement of platform users, promoting efficient and cost-conscious usage.
Serve as the escalation point for platform-related issues and strategic data decisions.
Collaborate with the Data Governance team to embed policies that ensure data transparency, retention, and compliance.
Align platform infrastructure to regulatory standards and internal governance frameworks.
Drive best practices around cost monitoring, access management, and secure query operations.
Manage relationships with platform vendors including Databricks, overseeing usage, renewals, and optimisation.
Lead platform performance tuning, cost forecasting, and environment scaling to support global usage.
Implement DR, compute allocation, and performance monitoring practices in partnership with DevOps and infrastructure teams.
Mentor platform users and junior engineers, building internal capability and platform understanding.
Contribute to training material, knowledge bases, and platform documentation.
Promote a culture of experimentation, learning, and accountability within the analytics engineering community.