Senior Manager - Operational Data Services

Position Summary

The Senior Manager, Operational Data Services leads the strategy, governance, delivery and operation of the data integrations, platforms and data assets that power business operations, processes and applications across WestJet. The role ensures operational data is current, reliable, accessible and trusted, and that the services underpinning operational systems perform effectively and support a dependable user experience.

The Senior Manager provides leadership for operational data platforms, data integration and production operations. The role sets long-term direction, aligns leaders around priorities, anticipates risks and ensures the organization has resilient, scalable and supportable operational data services. The role leads a team responsible for building and operating solutions across Databricks, Microsoft Azure and SQL-based platforms and coordinates high-priority incident response when data services affect business operations.

Accountability Statement

Accountable for designing, building and operating data integrations, platforms and assets that power business operations, processes and applications, ensuring data is current, reliable, accessible and trusted.

Key Responsibilities

Shape Operational Data Services Strategy and Operating Model

Define and lead the strategy, roadmap and operating model for Operational Data Services in alignment with WestJet and Data, Analytics & AI objectives.

Establish the vision, priorities, governance and performance expectations for operational data engineering, platform services, integrations and production support.

Translate enterprise and operational priorities into platform investments, capability roadmaps and sequenced delivery plans.

Advise executives and senior leaders on operational data strategy, service risk, technical trade-offs, capacity and investment decisions.

Identify opportunities to simplify the data landscape, reduce unnecessary duplication and create reusable services and patterns.

Continuously evolve the function based on operational needs, service performance, technology direction and lessons learned.

Align cross-functional leaders around enterprise outcomes and resolve competing priorities across business and technology.

Lead Operational Data Platforms and Technology Direction

Provide strategic and technical leadership for Databricks, Microsoft Azure and SQL-based operational data platforms and services.

Define platform roadmaps covering architecture, capacity, performance, availability, lifecycle, security, cost and technical currency.

Ensure platform decisions balance operational performance, resilience, scalability, interoperability, maintainability and total cost.

Establish standards and reusable patterns for data ingestion, transformation, storage, access, orchestration, observability and operational consumption.

Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Database, Network and Integration teams to align platform direction and resolve cross-enterprise dependencies.

Ensure platform changes, upgrades and migrations are planned and executed with appropriate testing, change controls, rollback and operational readiness.

Lead Data Integration and Operational Data Asset Delivery

Oversee the design and delivery of data pipelines, operational data stores, integrations and data assets that support business applications and processes.

Ensure business requirements, consumers, service expectations, data contracts, dependencies and success measures are understood before delivery commitments are made.

Promote consistent engineering practices, automated testing, source control, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and repeatable deployment approaches.

Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, observable and practical to support throughout their lifecycle.

Coordinate delivery across product, architecture, application, integration, data governance and business teams when outcomes span multiple functions.

Ensure technical debt, platform constraints and lifecycle risks are visible and incorporated into planning and investment decisions.

Operate Data Services

Own the operational performance, reliability, availability, freshness and supportability of operational data services and assets.

Establish service measures, operational thresholds and reporting for availability, latency, data freshness, pipeline health, data quality, capacity, cost and recovery.

Ensure end-to-end monitoring and service visibility identify stale, incomplete, delayed or unavailable data before significant business impact occurs.

Ensure support models, runbooks, escalation paths, on-call coverage, dependency maps and recovery procedures reflect service criticality.

Oversee capacity planning, performance optimization, platform administration, maintenance and operational lifecycle activities.

Use service and operational data to drive improvements in stability, resilience, supportability and cost efficiency.

Lead Major Incident Response, Recovery and Resilience

Provide leadership during incidents affecting operational data services, business systems or guest facing operations.

Assess business impact, establish priorities and coordinate technical and business response across internal teams, vendors and service providers.

Ensure transparent communication throughout significant incidents, including impacts, decisions, recovery progress and residual risk.

Confirm service recovery, data integrity and downstream readiness before incidents are closed.

Lead post-incident reviews, root-cause analysis and corrective-action governance, ensuring systemic issues are addressed and repeat incidents decrease.

Establish and regularly validate business-continuity, high-availability, disaster-recovery, backup, failover and restoration capabilities based on service criticality.

Lead Data Trust, Security and Operational Governance

Ensure operational data services meet security, privacy, data governance, architecture, regulatory and records-management requirements.

Embed data quality, lineage, ownership, access, retention and lifecycle controls into operational data services and delivery practices.

Proactively identify strategic, architectural, operational, cyber, data and vendor risks and assess their wider enterprise impact.

Establish decision rights, standards, controls and escalation paths that support timely and accountable delivery and operations.

Maintain audit-ready evidence for access, changes, deployments, service management, recovery testing and control operation.

Lead governance and executive discussions related to platform direction, operational risk, service performance and material investment decisions.

Manage Portfolio, Financial and Partner Performance

Lead prioritization and capacity planning across operational commitments, strategic delivery, technical improvements, maintenance and incident demand.

Provide visibility into priorities, commitments, delivery health, dependencies, operational risk and upcoming decisions.

Manage budgets, technology consumption and resource plans, including Databricks and Azure usage and SQL platform costs.

Oversee strategic vendors, managed-service providers and delivery partners, ensuring performance, value, risk and contractual commitments are actively managed.

Make evidence-based trade-offs when competing priorities or capacity constraints threaten critical operational outcomes.

Ensure investments and improvement initiatives are connected to measurable reliability, efficiency, risk or business outcomes.

Build and Lead a High-Performing Operational Data Team

Build, lead and develop a multidisciplinary team spanning data engineering, platform operations, data integration, analysis and production support.

Set clear direction, priorities, decision rights, service expectations and outcome-based performance measures.

Develop leadership depth, succession plans and capability roadmaps that support WestJet’s future operational data needs.

Coach team members to apply sound technical judgment, thin