Data Operations Manager

Data Operations Manager

Are you looking to make an impactful difference in your work, yourself, and your community? Why settle for just a job when you can land a career? At ICW Group, we are hiring team members who are ready to use their skills, curiosity, and drive to be part of our journey as we strive to transform the insurance carrier space. We're proud to be in business for over 50 years, and its change agents like yourself that will help us continue to deliver our mission to create the best insurance experience possible.

Headquartered in San Diego with regional offices located throughout the United States, ICW Group has been named for ten consecutive years as a top 50 performing P&C organization offering the stability of a large, profitable and growing company combined with a focus on all things people. It's our team members who make us an employer of choice and the vibrant company we are today. We strive to make both our internal and external communities better everyday! Learn more about why you want to be here!

Purpose Of The Job

The data operations manager leads the operational management, support, reliability and continuous improvement of ICW Group's enterprise data platform and data operations capabilities. This role is responsible for ensuring the stability, scalability, governance, observability and operational excellence of the company's modern data ecosystem, with a primary focus on the snowflake data platform and transitional support for legacy SQL server environments migrating to snowflake.

The role partners cross-functionally with data engineering, data governance, business intelligence, infrastructure, data security, architecture and business stakeholders to ensure data pipelines, integrations, data quality processes and platform operations are secure, reliable and aligned with enterprise objectives. The data operations manager establishes operational standards, support models, monitoring frameworks, incident management processes and service delivery practices to enable trusted, high-performing data products and analytics capabilities across the organization.

This role requires strong leadership, operational discipline, technical expertise in modern cloud data platforms and experience managing enterprise-scale data operations within a regulated environment such as insurance or financial services.

Essential Duties And Responsibilities

Leads enterprise data operations and platform support functions.

• Oversees operational support and administration of ICW Group's enterprise data platform, primarily built on snowflake and cloud-based modern data technologies.
• Manages operational activities related to data ingestion, transformation orchestration, monitoring, reconciliation, issue resolution and production support.
• Establishes operational processes, standards, runbooks, SLAs and support procedures for enterprise data services and platforms.
• Ensures high availability, reliability, scalability and performance optimization of enterprise data platforms and pipelines.
• Leads production support activities, root cause analysis, incident management, escalation management and problem resolution for data-related issues.
• Oversees operational readiness and transition-to-support activities for new data products, integrations and platform enhancements.
• Partners with data engineering teams to ensure production deployments follow operational best practices and governance standards.
• Supports the organization's transition from SQL server-based data solutions to snowflake-based cloud architecture over time.
• Oversees data platform observability, monitoring, alerting, capacity planning and environment management.
• Drives continuous improvement initiatives to enhance operational efficiency, automation, reliability and supportability of data services.
• Develops and tracks operational KPIs, service metrics, support trends, platform health indicators and data reliability measures.
• Ensures operational compliance with data governance, retention, security, audit and regulatory requirements.
• Coordinates maintenance windows, release support, environment refreshes and disaster recovery preparedness activities.
• Partners with vendors and third-party providers supporting enterprise data tools and integrations.

Leads data operations teams and operational delivery.

• Provides strategic and tactical leadership for data operations personnel and support functions.
• Establishes clear operational ownership, support models, escalation paths and accountability frameworks across the data organization.
• Manages operational workload prioritization, staffing, resource planning and support coverage.
• Oversees recruitment, onboarding, mentoring, coaching and performance management of team members.
• Communicates organizational goals, priorities, standards and operational expectations to direct and indirect reports.
• Promotes operational excellence, accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement across teams.
• Collaborates closely with data product, data engineering and data governance leaders to support enterprise initiatives.
• Supports agile delivery methodologies and operational alignment within scrum and devops-oriented environments.
• Develops operational budgets, support forecasts and vendor management activities as required.

Supervisory Responsibilities

Directly supervises data operations team members and carries out supervisory responsibilities in accordance with company policies and applicable laws. Responsibilities include interviewing, hiring, training employees, planning and assigning work, conducting performance and salary reviews, rewarding and disciplining employees, addressing complaints and resolving problems, coaching and mentoring team members, establishing development plans, setting operational goals and expectations, forecasting staffing needs and enforcing department policies and procedures.

Education And Experience

• Bachelor's degree required in computer science, information systems, engineering, data management or related field.
• Minimum 8 years of experience supporting enterprise data platforms, data warehouse operations, data engineering operations or related technical operations functions.
• Minimum 3 years of leadership or management experience overseeing technical or operational teams.
• Experience working with snowflake in enterprise-scale production environments required.
• Experience supporting SQL server-based data platforms and migration initiatives highly desired.
• Experience with modern cloud-based data ecosystems and enterprise data integration tools preferred.
• Experience in the insurance industry highly desired.
• Experience supporting agile, devops or dataops operating models preferred.

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations

• Snowflake certification preferred.
• ITIL, agile, scrum master or related operational certifications preferred.
• Cloud platform certifications in azure or AWS are a plus.

Knowledge And Skills

• Strong knowledge of enterprise data operations, production support, incident management and operational governance.
• Strong understanding of snowflake architecture, administration, security, workload management and performance optimization.
• Working knowledge of SQL server environments and enterprise migration strategies to cloud data platforms.
• Experience with enterprise ETL/ELT pipelines orchestration frameworks and data integration technologies.
• Experience supporting data observability, monitoring, logging, alerting and operational analytics solutions.
• Understanding of dataops, CI/CD, release management and operational automation practices.
• Familiarity with enterprise data governance, metadata management, data quality and security frameworks.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to lead operational response efforts and coordinate cross-functional issue resolution activities.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities and operational demands.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong leadership, collaboration, coaching and team development capabilities.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Working knowledge of Jira, ServiceNow, SQL and Microsoft Office products.
• Experience with tools such as dbt, Fivetran, Alation, BigID, monitoring platforms and cloud-native operational tooling preferred.

Physical Requirements

Office environment – no specific or unusual physical or environmental demands and employees are regularly required to sit, walk, stand, talk and hear.

Work Environment

This position operates in an office environment and requires the frequent use of a computer, telephone, copier and other standard office equipment.

This description is a general statement of essential job functions and responsibilities.

The position may include other duties as assigned.

The current range for this position is

This range is exclusive of fringe benefits and potential bonuses. If hired at ICW Group, your final base salary compensation will be determined by factors unique to each candidate, including experience, education and the location of the role and considers employees performing substantially similar work.

Why join ICW Group?

• Challenging work and the ability to make a difference
• You will have a voice and feel a sense of belonging
• We offer a competitive benefits package, with generous medical, dental, and vision plans as well as 401K retirement plans and company match
• Bonus potential for all positions