Manager, Data and Analytics

Forward Air Corp

Coppell, TX

JOB DETAILS
SKILLS
Access Control, Architectural Services, Best Practices, Business Intelligence, Career Counseling, Cisco Unity, Cloud Computing, Computer Science, Continuous Deployment/Delivery, Continuous Improvement, Continuous Integration, Cost Control, Data Analysis, Data Lake, Data Management, Data Processing, Data Quality, Data Storage, Dimensional Modeling, Documentation, Establish Priorities, Government Organizations, Hubs, Information/Data Security (InfoSec), Leadership, Maintain Compliance, Mentoring, Metadata, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Product Family, Microsoft Windows Azure, Microsoft Windows Operating System, Microsoft Word, Multitasking, Operational Support, Operations Processes, Performance Management, Performance Tuning/Optimization, Power BI, Process Improvement, Quality Management, Quality Monitoring, Resource Management, Root Cause Analysis, Service Level Agreement (SLA), Set Goals, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), Supply Chain, Systems Engineering, Team Building, Team Lead/Manager, Technical Delivery, Technical Leadership, Web Conferencing, WebEx
LOCATION
Coppell, TX
POSTED
5 days ago

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.

About the Company

F

Forward Air Corp

Since 1990, Forward Air has been a leading provider of ground transportation and related logistics services to the North American air freight and expedited LTL market. We offer surface shipping on an accelerated “time-definite” basis, delivering cargo at a specific time, but under less time-sensitive situations – supplying you with a cost effective, reliable alternative to air transportation. We work with companies of all sizes to develop tangible advantages and build the best products to meet your specific needs. Forward Air presents to the wholesale transportation community (logistics companies, freight forwarders, integrated air cargo carriers, passenger/ cargo airlines, and non-traditional shippers), a single-source provider that can deliver more supply chain services and a superior menu of choices. Throughout the years we have added supplementary lines to our linehaul service, such as full truckload operations (Truckload Services), final-mile coverage (Complete® Cartage), and an Airline Logistics program, and we will continue to expand our services to meet the changing needs and growth of our customer base.

Forward Air is structured to optimize both savings and service to our customers. Direct partnerships with owner-operators and other surface transportation providers, enable us to remain cost-competitive. The Forward Air network is designed with over 90 facilities located at or near major U.S. and Canadian airports, 12 regional sort centers and over 300 beyond points (secondary airports provided through our Complete Cartage service), creating one of the most comprehensive linehaul networks in the industry.

The foundation product for Forward Air is our expedited linehaul service, offering consistent and reliable transit and on-time, damage-free deliveries. By locating terminals on or near airports and maintaining a scheduled transportation network, we are able to arrange for convenient and consistent service with broad geographic coverage. Shipments of varying sizes (TL/LTL) are received at our terminals and transported by contracted service providers either (1) on a direct truck to the destination terminal, (2) through our Columbus, Ohio central sorting hub, or (3) through one of our 12 regional hubs, where they are unloaded, sorted, and reloaded in rapid fashion. After reloading the shipments, our contracted service providers deliver them to the destination city for early morning recovery. Through our Forward Air Complete® cartage service, customers also can have shipments picked up from the shipper, delivered to the final consignee, or transferred at the airport, simplifying the freight management processes. These options allow us to maximize handling efficiency of each shipment while minimizing freight loss and damage, improving transit times over traditional ground transportation.

COMPANY SIZE
2,500 to 4,999 employees
INDUSTRY
Transport and Storage - Materials
FOUNDED
1981
WEBSITE
https://www.forwardair.com/content/careers-0