Manager, Data and Analytics

Forward Air Corp.; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Forward Air Corp. is seeking a Manager, Data and Analytics to lead the design and delivery of enterprise data platforms in Dallas, Texas. This role involves technical leadership, guiding teams, and collaborating with business stakeholders to ensure high-performance data solutions.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in building modern data architectures in Azure, driving best practices, and optimizing analytics solutions. Strong leadership skills and a track record in data governance and project management are essential.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience designing and building enterprise data solutions.
• 5+ years of team leadership experience with multiple projects.
• Strong expertise in Lakehouse architecture.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and architectural direction.
• Define and enforce data standards and operational processes.
• Lead and mentor Data Engineers and Analytics Engineers.

Skills

Data Architecture

Team Leadership

Azure Databricks

Data Governance

Cloud Cost Optimization

Power BI

Education

Undergraduate degree in Computer Science or related field

Graduate degree preferred

Tools

Microsoft O365

Terraform

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Databricks

Job description

The Manager, Data and Analytics is a hands‑on technical leadership role responsible for the design, development, and delivery of enterprise data and analytics platforms. They define and execute the organization’s data architecture strategy, ensuring scalable, secure, and high‑performing data solutions that empower business decision‑making. They bring deep technical expertise with strong people leadership, guiding a team of Data Engineers and Analytics Engineers while partnering closely with business stakeholders. The ideal candidate brings a track record of building modern data platforms in Azure, driving best practices, and delivering high‑impact analytics solutions. They play a critical part in enabling self‑service analytics and advancing data governance across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and architectural direction to internal and vendor teams to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable enterprise data solutions
• Define, implement, and enforce enterprise data standards, including ingestion, transformation, data quality, and operational monitoring processes
• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Data Engineers and Analytics Engineers, fostering a culture of engineering excellence and continuous improvement
• Establish team goals, manage performance, and support career progression through coaching and development planning
• Manage team capacity, prioritize workloads, and allocate resources across concurrent initiatives and operational needs
• Partner with business and analytics stakeholders to understand requirements, communicate progress, and manage expectations across projects
• Ensure data pipelines meet SLAs for availability, freshness, completeness, and accuracy
• Establish and maintain data quality frameworks, including monitoring, validation, and alerting strategies
• Lead root‑cause analysis and resolution of complex data and platform issues across multiple systems
• Champion data governance practices, including metadata management, lineage, classification, and access control using Unity Catalog while ensuring compliance with data privacy standards
• Architect and evolve a modern Lakehouse platform leveraging Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Delta Lake, and medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold)
• Enable advanced analytics and self‑service BI by delivering curated semantic models and Power BI solutions
• Drive platform performance optimization and cost efficiency, including Databricks tuning, cluster management, and cloud cost governance
• Maintain comprehensive documentation, SOPs, and operational runbooks to support scalable and sustainable data platform operations
• All other duties as assigned to meet evolving business needs.

Qualifications

• Education: Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field from an accredited college or university required; Graduate degree preferred.
• Certification/Licensure: Relevant cloud or data certifications (e.g., Microsoft Azure Data Engineer Associate, Databricks certification) preferred
• 10+ years of experience designing and building enterprise data and analytics solutions using modern cloud technologies
• 5+ years of experience leading technical teams, delivering multiple concurrent projects, and owning architecture and delivery quality
• Proven experience building and scaling data platforms on Microsoft Azure, including Azure Databricks and ADLS Gen2
• Strong expertise in Lakehouse architecture (Delta Lake, medallion design) and both batch and streaming data processing (e.g., Structured Streaming, Auto Loader, Event Hubs, Kafka)
• Experience delivering semantic models and self‑service analytics solutions, including Power BI and dimensional modeling
• Experience with DataOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform), and orchestration tools (ADF, Databricks Workflows, Airflow)
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex business requirements into scalable, reusable data products in partnership with stakeholders; supply chain experience preferred
• Demonstrated discretion and confidentiality in handling and protecting sensitive information.
• Technical: Proficient with common office technologies, including Windows PCs, Microsoft O365 (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and web conferencing (Teams, Zoom, Webex, etc.)
• Environment: Comfort commuting to/from and working in a 100% on‑site setting (listed in this posting), with travel for related meetings/events.