Data Operations Support Lead/Manager - CTH

Data Operations Support Lead/Manager

Position Title: Data Operations Support Lead/Manager

Department: Global Data Operations

Location: Remote/Hybrid (Chicago)

Reports To: Director, Global Data Operations

Position Summary

The Data Operations Support Lead/Manager serves as a senior technical and operational leader responsible for ensuring the stability, reliability, and performance of enterprise production data platforms, including insurance and financial data warehouse ecosystems. As a core member of Global Data Operations, this role acts as the primary escalation point for complex incidents, leads daily operational coordination across cross-functional teams, and drives platform enhancements and automation to enable proactive monitoring and issue prevention. This role also provides technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance to support engineers, fostering operational excellence, continuous improvement, and strong data governance across the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and manage the data operations intake process, including incident intake, communication, prioritization, and platform optimization.
• Serve as a senior contributor in architectural discussions, process improvements, and strategic platform enhancements.
• Drive system reliability, scalability, observability, and operational governance across enterprise data platforms.
• Oversee data integrity, transformations, and governance practices across production environments.
• Lead initiatives to improve data quality, lineage visibility, metadata management, and monitoring capabilities.
• Act as the primary escalation point for complex data pipeline, integration, and platform issues.
• Collaborate closely with Data Engineering, DBAs, BI, Infrastructure, and Security teams to resolve incidents and implement permanent solutions.
• Enforce and continuously improve access controls, permissions, and data security standards.
• Support SOX, GDPR, and internal audit requirements, including evidence preparation, remediation, and control validation.
• Develop and maintain high-quality documentation, including pipelines, processes, dependencies, and workflow artifacts.
• Produce monthly operational service reports covering SLAs, KPIs, incidents, changes, and overall service health.
• Contribute to enterprise initiatives such as system integrations, data modernization, and platform upgrades.
• Participate in solution design reviews and operational readiness assessments for new data products.
• Promote a culture of engineering excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Skills and Experience

8+ years of experience with a strong focus on data-centric operations or support. Proven experience with ETL/ELT pipelines, data warehouses, data lakes, and complex data transformations. Demonstrated experience supporting recurring production data workflows and delivering accurate, timely outputs. Proven ability to manage multiple priorities in a time-sensitive and cyclical operational environment. Strong attention to detail with a deep focus on data quality, accuracy, and consistency. Excellent analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills with a proactive, solution-oriented mindset. Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively across teams, with strong ownership and escalation judgement. Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical issues for non-technical stakeholders. Experience supervising, mentoring, or providing technical leadership to junior team members. Experience partnering with business stakeholders on data submissions, issue resolution, and quality remediation. Experience with Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, Astronomer (Airflow), Automic Automation, and Microsoft SQL Server. Strong familiarity with Azure-based data platforms, including Azure Synapse, Azure SQL, and Azure DevOps. Education Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Compensation and benefits

We offer a competitive and comprehensive compensation package. The base salary range represents the anticipated low end and high end of the range for this position. The actual compensation will be influenced by a wide range of factors including, but not limited to previous experience, education, pay market/geography, complexity or scope, specialized skill set, lines of business/practice area, supply/demand, and scheduled hours. On top of a competitive salary, great teams and exciting career opportunities, we also offer a wide range of benefits. Below are the minimum core benefits you'll get, depending on your job level these benefits may improve: Medical/dental/vision plans, which start from day one! Life and accident insurance 401(K) and Roth options Tax-advantaged accounts (HSA, FSA) Educational expense reimbursement Paid parental leave Other benefits include: Digital mental health services (Talkspace) Flexible work hours (availability varies by office and job function) Training programs Gallagher Thrive program elevating your health through challenges, workshops and digital fitness programs for your overall wellbeing Charitable matching gift program And more...

The benefits summary above applies to fulltime positions. If you are not applying for a fulltime position, details about benefits will be provided during the selection process.

We value inclusion and diversity

Inclusion and diversity (I&D) is a core part of our business, and it's embedded into the fabric of our organization. For more than 95 years, Gallagher has led with a commitment to sustainability and to support the communities where we live and work. Gallagher embraces our employees' diverse identities, experiences and talents, allowing us to better serve our clients and communities. We see inclusion as a conscious commitment and diversity as a vital strength. By embracing diversity in all its forms, we live out The Gallagher Way to its fullest. Gallagher believes that all persons are entitled to equal employment opportunity and prohibits any form of discrimination by its managers, employees, vendors or customers based on race, color, religion, creed, gender (including pregnancy status), sexual orientation, gender identity (which includes transgender and other gender non-conforming individuals), gender expression, hair expression, marital status, parental status, age, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition, genetic information, veteran or military status, citizenship status, or any other characteristic protected (herein referred to as "protected characteristics") by applicable federal, state, or local laws. Equal employment opportunity will be extended in all aspects of the employer-employee relationship, including, but not limited to, recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, transfer, demotion, compensation, benefits, layoff, and termination. In addition, Gallagher will make reasonable accommodations to known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified person with a disability, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of our business.