Senior Manager, Data Platform Engineering
SolarWinds
Salary undisclosed
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Description
At SolarWinds, we’re a people-first company. Our purpose is to enrich the lives of the people we serve—including our employees, customers, shareholders, partners, and communities. Join us in our mission to help customers accelerate business transformation with simple, powerful, and secure solutions.
The ideal candidate thrives in an innovative, fast-paced environment and is collaborative, accountable, ready, and empathetic. We’re looking for individuals who believe they can accomplish more as a team and create lasting growth for themselves and others. We hire based on attitude, competency, and commitment. Solarians are ready to advance our world-class solutions in a fast-paced environment and accept the challenge to lead with purpose. If you’re looking to build your career with an exceptional team, you’ve come to the right place. Join SolarWinds and grow with us!
ROLE OVERVIEW
SolarWinds is hiring a Senior Manager, Data Platform Engineering to build and lead the team responsible for administering and configuring the Enterprise Data tech stack — Fivetran, BigQuery, Dataplex, dbt, and Tableau. This person will set technical direction and architecture standards across the platform, and build, coach, and grow the team that executes day to day.
This is a working-manager (player-coach) role, not a pure people-management position: the team is small today, and this person is expected to stay technically close to the platform — setting patterns and making architecture calls, and personally covering tech-stack administration the team hasn't yet grown to cover — while delegating hands-on execution to their report(s) where it exists.
You'll balance hands-on technical leadership with people management — coaching your team, setting goals, and representing the platform in cross-functional planning with adjacent teams.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Team leadership & people management
- Lead, coach, and grow the Data Platform Engineering team — starting with one direct report, with a plan to scale as workload and budget allow.
- Run regular 1:1s, set clear goals, and manage performance and career development for direct report(s).
- Own hiring for the team as it grows, partnering with People and the hiring committee on leveling and comp.
Platform architecture & technical direction
- Own architecture standards and technical roadmap across the Enterprise Data tech stack — Fivetran, BigQuery, Dataplex, dbt, and Tableau.
- Make build-vs-buy and platform-pattern decisions that shape how the team executes day to day.
- Stay hands-on enough to unblock the team on hard technical problems, without personally owning routine operational work.
Data tech stack administration & configuration
- Ensure Fivetran, BigQuery, Dataplex, dbt, and Tableau are properly administered and configured — access, environments, and platform settings across the stack.
- Own dbt Cloud platform administration (environments, scheduling, CI/CD, access); model development and transformation logic remain with Data Engineering.
- Own Tableau platform administration (user access, groups, permissions, licensing), scaling this to a dedicated hire as the team grows.
- Set and maintain configuration standards so the stack stays consistent, secure, and auditable as the team scales.
Execution oversight
- Ensure the team's reliability, cost, and governance commitments — across ingestion, BigQuery, Dataplex/PII access, dbt, and Tableau — are being met.
- Review and prioritise the team's operational backlog against the platform roadmap.
Cross-functional partnership
- Represent the Data Platform Engineering pillar in planning with Data Engineering, Data Governance, Cloud Security, and Business Intelligence.
- Negotiate priorities and dependencies with adjacent teams on the team's behalf, rather than leaving individual engineers to manage those relationships alone.
REQUIRED EXPERIENCE
Technical depth
- Deep, hands-on background in Google Cloud Platform, BigQuery, and Dataplex — enough to retain technical credibility and keep setting standards for the team.
- Hands-on experience administering and configuring dbt (or a comparable transformation platform) and Fivetran (or a comparable ELT tool).
- Experience administering Tableau or a comparable BI platform — permissions, licensing, and platform configuration.
- Track record of technical leadership — driving standards, mentoring engineers, or leading initiatives — even without formal management experience.
Leadership experience
- Experience or demonstrated readiness to lead a technical team — formal people-management experience is helpful but not required.
- Demonstrated ability to balance architecture/strategic work with hands-on operational realities.
- Strong communication skills — able to represent the team's priorities and trade-offs to peers and senior leadership.
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE
- Prior experience leading or mentoring a technical team, even informally (tech lead, staff-level mentorship, project leadership).
- Experience scaling a team from one or two people to a larger group.
SolarWinds is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. SolarWinds will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.
All applications are treated in accordance with the SolarWinds Privacy Notice: https://www.solarwinds.com/applicant-privacy-notice
About this role
SolarWinds is seeking a Senior Manager, Data Platform Engineering to lead and grow a small team responsible for the company's enterprise data stack—Fivetran, BigQuery, Dataplex, dbt, and Tableau. This is a hybrid technical and people-management role: you'll set architecture standards and drive technical decisions across the platform while coaching your initial direct report and scaling the team over time. The position requires you to stay hands-on with the tech stack, unblocking your team on complex problems and personally handling platform administration work until the team grows, rather than stepping into pure management.
You'll need deep, hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform, BigQuery, and Dataplex, plus demonstrated competency administering dbt, Fivetran, and Tableau. The role calls for someone with a track record of technical leadership—whether through mentoring, setting standards, or driving initiatives—and either formal management experience or clear readiness to lead a team. You'll represent the platform in cross-functional planning with Data Engineering, Data Governance, Cloud Security, and Business Intelligence, negotiating priorities on behalf of your team rather than leaving individual engineers to manage those relationships alone.
This is an in-office role in Austin, Texas. It suits someone who thrives balancing strategic architecture work with operational realities, communicates clearly with peers and leadership, and is energized by building and scaling a technical team from the ground up.
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Pay for this role
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