Principal Platform Engineer

Dow•Midland, MI

About The Position

At Dow, we believe in putting people first and we’re passionate about delivering integrity, respect and safety to our customers, our employees and the planet. Our people are at the heart of our solutions. They reflect the communities we live in and the world where we do business. Their diversity is our strength. We’re a community of relentless problem solvers that offers the daily opportunity to contribute with your perspective, transform industries and shape the future. Our purpose is simple - to deliver a sustainable future for the world through science and collaboration. If you’re looking for a challenge and meaningful role, you’re in the right place. About this role Dow has an exciting opportunity for a Principal Platform Engineer located in Midland, MI or Houston, TX. This role: We are looking for a visionary platform leader who operates with a product mindset. The ideal candidate is a natural enabler who is committed to reducing both developer and consumption friction, knowing that your ultimate success is measured by the outcomes your platforms enable and deliver. The candidate will bring a true engineering mindset to platform operations with an automation first mindset, championing infrastructure as code, and creating "paved roads" that allow teams to safely and rapidly deploy complex solutions. The right candidate ideally has a background in data engineering and possesses a deep empathy for the daily hurdles developers face and proactively architect’s platform capabilities to remove them. Beyond being an innovator, the ideal candidate acts as a strategic governor and an operational leader. They possess a FinOps mindset, understanding exactly how to balance aggressive innovation with meticulous cloud cost optimization and resource management. The right candidate will act as a champion for reliability and enterprise governance and can blend AIOps methodologies and robust access controls into the foundation of the platform so that security and observability are built in. As a leader, the candidate must thrive in complex enterprise environments and have the foresight to design platform capabilities that can gracefully handle massive organizational data shifts, such as integrations with both legacy and modern technologies. Ultimately, the ideal candidate is a multiplier who elevates the entire data ecosystem.

Requirements

A minimum of a bachelor’s degree or relevant military experience at or above a U.S. E5 ranking or Canadian Petty Officer 2nd Class or Sergeant. OR minimum of 12 years of relevant experience in lieu of a bachelor’s degree
Minimum 12 years of relevant experience
A minimum requirement for this U.S. based position is the ability to work legally in the United States. No visa sponsorship/support is available for this position, including for any type of U.S. permanent residency (green card) process.

Nice To Haves

Data Engineering Background: Previous hands-on experience as a Data Engineer, providing deep empathy for developer workflows, friction points, and pipeline lifecycles.
Legacy SAP Expertise: Practical experience integrating with and extracting from complex SAP environments, specifically SAP ECC and SAP BW 7.5.
Manufacturing Context: Experience operating enterprise data platforms within large, global manufacturing organizations, including exposure to IT/OT integration or supply chain analytics.
Enterprise Migrations: A proven track record of architecting and executing massive migrations from legacy enterprise data warehouses to a modern Databricks Lakehouse.
Data Engineering Background: Previous hands-on experience as a Data Engineer, providing deep empathy for developer workflows, friction points, and pipeline lifecycles.
Legacy SAP Expertise: Practical experience integrating with and extracting from complex SAP environments, specifically SAP ECC and SAP BW 7.5.
Manufacturing Context: Experience operating enterprise data platforms within large, global manufacturing organizations, including exposure to IT/OT integration or supply chain analytics.
Enterprise Migrations: A proven track record of architecting and executing massive migrations from legacy enterprise data warehouses to a modern Databricks Lakehouse.
Databricks Platform Mastery: Advanced, hands-on administrative and architectural experience with the Databricks Lakehouse platform, specifically focused on workspace administration, Unity Catalog architecture, and compute management.
DevOps & Infrastructure as Code: Deep proficiency in automating cloud infrastructure using Terraform, Azure Resource Manager (ARM)/Bicep, and Azure DevOps. Strong understanding of CI/CD for platform provisioning.
Enterprise Data Governance: Architecting and administering comprehensive access controls (RBAC/ABAC), data lineage, and secure data sharing models (Delta Sharing) using Unity Catalog to ensure the enterprise ecosystem remains compliant, secure, and highly discoverable.
Strategic Integration: Experience architecting the platform groundwork for massive enterprise data transformations within complex, global environments. Proven ability to design scalable, high-throughput integration patterns that bridge modern Lakehouse architectures with legacy ERP systems and enterprise BI ecosystems
AI & Developer Enablement: Designing and operationalizing the infrastructure required to support advanced AI, BI, and data science workloads (including MLflow, Databricks Apps, and AI/BI Genie) to accelerate developer productivity and remove platform friction for data engineers.

Responsibilities

Platform Enablement & Strategy: Act as the product owner for our Data & AI platforms including Azure Databricks, C3.ai, Neo4j, and others.
Governance: Design and administer the overarching governance strategy using Unity Catalog and other data catalog platforms/tools. Manage integrations across governance tools, define sophisticated access control models (RBAC/ABAC), enable data lineage, and oversee secure internal and external data sharing (Delta Sharing).
FinOps & Cost Architecture: Own the financial efficiency of the platform. Implement rigorous DBU tracking, auto-scaling policies, and compute optimization strategies to maximize ROI without throttling developer innovation.
Platform DevOps & Automation: Treat the platform as code. Lead the design and implementation of CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and automated deployment strategies for platform components and workspaces.
AIOps & Observability: Define and engineer the controls, telemetry, and KPIs for platform health. Implement AIOps strategies to automate monitoring, incident management, and platform reliability at an enterprise scale.
Team Enablement & Architecture: Serve as the technical linchpin for platform engineers, data engineers, data scientists, and other data personas, providing the blueprints, guardrails, and templates they need to build secure, performant solutions.
IT Solution/Application/System – drives the full solution lifecycle, including functional / technical design – solution architecture, buy vs build decisions, integration of third-party off-the-shelf software, develops / integrates / tests / builds solutions with the ability to operate in both waterfall and agile environment , ensures compliance to corporate standards, architecture guidelines, and information security policies

Benefits

Equitable and market-competitive base pay and bonus opportunity across our global markets, along with locally relevant incentives.
Benefits and programs to support your physical, mental, financial, and social well-being, to help you get the care you need...when you need it.
Competitive retirement program that may include company-provided benefits, savings opportunities, financial planning, and educational resources to help you achieve your long term financial-goals.
Employee stock purchase programs (availability varies depending on location).
Student Debt Retirement Savings Match Program (U.S. only). Dow will take the value of monthly student debt payments and apply them as if they are contributions to the Employees’ Savings Plan (401(k)), helping employees reach the Company match.
Robust medical and life insurance packages that offer a variety of coverage options to meet your individual needs. Travel insurance is also available in certain countries/locations.
Opportunities to learn and grow through training and mentoring, work experiences, community involvement and team building.
Workplace culture empowering role-based flexibility to maximize personal productivity and balance personal needs.
Competitive yearly vacation allowance.
Paid time off for new parents (birthing and non-birthing, including adoptive and foster parents).
Paid time off to care for family members who are sick or injured.
Paid time off to support volunteering and Employee Resource Group’s (ERG) participation.
Wellbeing Portal for all Dow employees, our one-stop shop to promote wellbeing, empowering employees to take ownership of their entire wellbeing journey.
On-site fitness facilities to help stay healthy and active (availability varies depending on location).
Employee discounts for online shopping, cinema tickets, gym memberships and more.
Additionally, some of our locations might offer:
Transportation allowance (availability varies depending on location)
Meal subsidiaries/vouchers (availability varies depending on location)
Carbon-neutral transportation incentives e.g. bike to work (availability varies depending on location)