Data Engineering Supervisor

At Thorlabs, we design and manufacture components, instruments, and systems that transform the world by identifying, enabling, and accelerating key photonics (i.e., light-based) technologies. Backed by a dedicated workforce of more than 3,000 employees worldwide, Thorlabs contributes to cutting-edge research and real-world innovation.

Whether you're early in your career or bringing years of experience, you'll find opportunities to grow, take ownership, and make meaningful contributions from day one. We know every employee brings unique talents and perspectives that fuel our success, and we seek driven individuals who are excited to make an impact in a fun, fast-moving culture.

The Data Engineering Supervisor will lead and support a team of data engineers in building and maintaining the data platform that delivers accessible, high-quality data to power decision-making at Thorlabs.

The Supervisor will provide day-to-day leadership, technical guidance, and coordination of work across the team while actively contributing to the design, development, and operation of cloud-native data pipelines and systems within Microsoft Fabric and Azure. This role bridges hands-on technical execution with team coordination and oversight, ensuring consistent delivery of reliable, scalable, and secure data solutions.

The Supervisor will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to understand business requirements and translate them into effective data solutions that support business intelligence and analytics. This position is designed for a developing leader with strong technical capabilities who has demonstrated the ability to guide others and is progressing toward broader management responsibilities.

Although the position is based in Newton, NJ, from time to time it may be required to undertake duties at other Thorlabs locations.

Essential Job Functions include the following, but are not limited to:

• Provide day-to-day oversight and coordination of work for the data operations team, including task assignment, prioritization, and delivery tracking.
• Serve as a technical leader, guiding team members on best practices in data engineering, pipeline design, and problem-solving.
• Act as the primary point of contact for the team, ensuring alignment on priorities, timelines, and deliverables.
• Design, develop, and maintain cloud-native data pipelines (ETL/ELT) using Microsoft Fabric (Data Pipelines, Dataflows Gen2, Lakehouses, Warehouses) and Azure services (ADLS, ADF, Functions, Key Vault).
• Organize and structure data within OneLake and Azure Data Lake in optimized formats to support efficient querying, secure access, and high-quality datasets.
• Build and support reporting and data products that deliver meaningful, scalable insights for business users.
• Develop reusable tools and frameworks to improve consistency, reliability, and efficiency across the data platform.
• Monitor data pipelines and platform performance, troubleshoot issues, and support root-cause analysis and resolution.
• Ensure adherence to data governance standards including data quality, lineage, schema management, and documentation practices.
• Partner with business stakeholders, analytics teams, and application owners to understand data requirements and translate them into scalable solutions.
• Support hiring processes by participating in candidate interviews and providing input on team staffing needs.
• Provide performance feedback and development planning for team members

Physical Activities: The employee is occasionally required to stoop, kneel, crouch, climb or crawl. The employee must frequently lift and move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and move up to 50 pounds.

Experience:

• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, data analytics, or related technical roles.
• Demonstrated experience leading work efforts and team members or serving in an informal team lead capacity.
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining data pipelines using Azure Data Factory or Microsoft Fabric Data Pipelines, ADLS, Azure SQL/Synapse/Fabric Warehouse, Dataflows Gen2, Spark, and Python.
• Strong SQL experience with performance optimization and working with structured and semi-structured data.
• Experience with data modeling concepts (normalized, denormalized, star schema, tabular models).
• Familiarity with Git-based development workflows (Azure DevOps or GitHub).
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric components (OneLake, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Semantic Models).
• Experience working with Power BI or similar reporting tools.
• Exposure to data governance practices and tools such as Microsoft Purview.
• Working with the internals of a distributed compute engine (Spark, Presto, DBT, or Flink/Beam)
• Query optimization, resource allocation and management, and data lake performance (Presto, SQL)
• Cloud infrastructure (Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, Terraform)
• Modern Big-Data storage technologies (Iceberg, Hudi, Delta)
• Experience connecting to varied data sources, on-prem and cloud.
• Understands different data models like normalized, de-normalized, stars, and snowflake models. Working experience with transactional, temporal, time series, and structured and unstructured data, Azure DataLake is a plus.
• Experience in deployment and maintenance of ETL Jobs.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent work experience

Specialized Knowledge and Skills:

• Proficiency with Microsoft Azure services including Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL, ADLS Gen2, Azure Functions, Databricks, Azure Analysis Services, Azure Datalake storage, and Azure Synapse/Fabric Warehouse.
• Strong coding skills in T-SQL, Python, PowerShell, JSON, and PySpark.
• Familiarity with Lakehouse storage formats such as Delta or Parquet.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to guide team members and collaborate effectively across functions.
• High-energy self-starter with the ability to balance technical execution and team coordination responsibilities.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.

Direct Reports: This position will have direct supervisory responsibilities.

Pay range for this position is $96,000 -$119,500 depending on experience

Thorlabs values its diverse environment and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified individuals will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age or veteran status. Job descriptions are not intended as and do not create employment contracts. The organization maintains its status as an at-will employer. Employees can be terminated for any reason not prohibited by law.

Thorlabs offers a complete benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision insurance, company paid life insurance, a generous PTO package, a 401(k) plan, and tuition reimbursement just to name a few..