Data Platform Lead

Job description

A Career at HARMAN As a technology leader that is rapidly on the move, HARMAN is filled with people who are focused on making life better. Innovation, inclusivity and teamwork are a part of our DNA. When you add that to the challenges we take on and solve together, you’ll discover that at HARMAN you can grow, make a difference and be proud of the work you do every day. Introduction: A Career at HARMAN Automotive We’re a global, multi-disciplinary team that’s putting the innovative power of technology to work and transforming tomorrow. At HARMAN Automotive, we give you the keys to fast-track your career. • Engineer audio systems and integrated technology platforms that augment the driving experience • Combine ingenuity, in-depth research, and a spirit of collaboration with design and engineering excellence • Advance in-vehicle infotainment, safety, efficiency, and enjoyment About the Role We are looking for a Data Platform Lead to own the technical direction, architecture, engineering capability, operation, and continuous evolution of HARMAN Automotive’s Enterprise Data Platform. Built primarily on Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks, the platform enables enterprise data engineering, governed data products, data sharing, analytics, and AI at scale. The Data Platform Lead is accountable for the technical architecture and engineering standards of the platform and for ensuring it is secure, reliable, scalable, cost-effective, and easy for domain teams to adopt. The role leads a multidisciplinary technical team spanning Platform Engineering, Data Engineering, Data Product Enablement, and Site Reliability Engineering. The Platform Lead sets technical direction, develops engineering talent, balances platform engineering and reliability priorities, and ensures the team can support data product teams without becoming the permanent development organization for every business domain. The Data Platform Lead works closely with the Data Platform Portfolio Manager, Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Analytics, MDM and Data Quality, business domains, and other technology teams. Enterprise Architecture provides enterprise standards, architecture review, and alignment, while the Data Platform Lead retains accountability for the architecture and technical evolution of the Enterprise Data Platform. An external implementation partner will initially build significant portions of the platform. The Data Platform Lead will work alongside the partner, retain HARMAN’s technical decision rights, ensure continuous knowledge transfer, and establish the internal capabilities required to operate and evolve the platform as external implementation capacity decreases. What You Will Do • Own the technical architecture, engineering direction, and evolution of the Enterprise Data Platform, with Azure Databricks as the strategic enterprise data and AI platform. • Define and maintain platform architecture standards, technical patterns, architecture decisions, and guardrails across Databricks, Azure services, identity, networking, security, storage, governance, automation, and operations. • Own the technical platform roadmap and lifecycle, including platform capabilities, architecture evolution, technical debt, reliability improvements, automation, and engineering investments. • Partner with the Data Platform Portfolio Manager on demand, dependencies, sequencing, and capacity while retaining ownership of the platform capability and technical roadmap. • Manage the platform as an enterprise product and service with defined capabilities, service expectations, measurable outcomes, adoption goals, and a strong focus on developer and user experience. • Lead a multidisciplinary technical team spanning Platform Engineering, Data Engineering, Data Product Enablement, and Site Reliability Engineering. • Set clear technical direction and accountability across the team and develop senior technical talent capable of owning major platform capabilities and engineering domains. • Balance engineering capacity across platform development, reliability, technical debt, automation, operational improvement, reusable capabilities, and targeted data product enablement. • Lead the architecture and implementation of Azure Databricks capabilities including workspaces, compute, jobs, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, data sharing, platform security, and enterprise deployment patterns. • Define Azure integration patterns for identity, networking, private connectivity, storage, secrets, security controls, monitoring, logging, and shared enterprise services. • Own the technical governance architecture for the platform, including Unity Catalog standards, permissions, access patterns, lineage, ownership, data sharing, and policy enforcement in partnership with Cybersecurity and enterprise governance teams. • Establish scalable platform engineering practices including Infrastructure as Code, Terraform, CI/CD, automated testing, environment management, configuration management, deployment automation, and reusable engineering components. • Lead the development of API-driven and automated self-service platform capabilities that allow domain teams to onboard, provision environments, request access, deploy workloads, and publish governed data products efficiently. • Establish golden paths, reusable platform services, engineering standards, and reference implementations that allow data product teams to deliver consistently without unnecessary central dependency. • Establish and continuously improve the platform operating model, including observability, reliability objectives, incident and problem management, resilience, recovery, performance, capacity, and operational automation. • Ensure the platform provides appropriate monitoring, service health visibility, cost transparency, usage metrics, and operational reporting. • Apply a strong cost and value mindset across Azure and Databricks consumption, platform services, licensing, capacity, and engineering investments.