Data Operations Lead

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. We work with the world's most valuable brands and have global reach across 100+ markets, with deep local expertise. Our people are the key to our success. We're committed to fostering a culture of creativity, belonging and continuous learning, attracting and developing the brightest talent, and providing exciting career opportunities that help our people grow. For more information, visit WPP.com. Why we're hiring: WPP Media is embarking on a transformative data journey through Databridge —our internal comprehensive data strategy and framework designed to unify our fragmented global data landscape. We are moving from isolated, market-specific implementations to a standardized, scalable, cloud-agnostic, and AI-ready data platform built on a modern tech stack: dbt, Databricks, Python (dlthub), and GitHub Actions . As Data Operations Lead , you will establish and head our new Data Integration & Operations team in Chennai. This is a build-and-run role : you'll define how the team operates while leading day-to-day delivery of operational excellence across global data products. You will be the custodian of production —owning the operational layer including CI/CD automation, deployment pipelines, monitoring, data quality enforcement, incident management, and support. This role requires deep technical knowledge of Databricks and modern data platforms, alongside the ability to lead, mentor, and scale a growing team. What you'll be doing: Technical Ownership & Execution Lead the team responsible for data integration, orchestration, and platform operations across Azure and GCP environments Build and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Databricks Asset Bundles for data workflows Design platform-wide monitoring, logging, and alerting covering pipeline execution, data quality, SLA compliance, and cost Manage production deployments and own centralized job orchestration via Databricks Jobs/Workflows (scheduling, dependencies, retries, notifications) Implement comprehensive data quality testing and validation using dbt's testing framework and custom checks Operational Standardization Create and roll out standard operating procedures, runbooks, onboarding guides, and automation patterns Establish reusable deployment frameworks and project templates for consistent implementation across markets Build and maintain the Central Data Solution Repository <span data-ccp-parastyle="par