Senior Director, Sustaining and Performance Engineering

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Our Company

At Teradata, we believe that people thrive when empowered with better information. That's why we built the most complete cloud analytics and data platform for AI. By delivering harmonized data, trusted AI, and faster innovation, we uplift and empower our customers-and our customers' customers-to make better, more confident decisions. The world's top companies across every major industry trust Teradata to improve business performance, enrich customer experiences, and fully integrate data across the enterprise.

What You'll Do

This role is accountable for ensuring the stability, performance, and quality of mission critical database software used by enterprise customers worldwide.

This role will have end-to-end responsibility for customer-reported defect resolution, complex performance escalations, and close collaboration with Product Engineering to continuously improve release quality and system reliability. The ideal candidate combines strong leadership, deep technical credibility in database systems, and the ability to operate effectively at both strategic and execution levels.

The Sustaining Engineering leadership role leads a global software development engineers dedicated to taking proven technologies and making them faster, leaner, and more resilient using the latest in AI-driven automation and predictive telemetry in alignment with product tools, technology, and release processes. This role offers a unique intersection of long-term platform stability and cutting-edge innovation. The position provides the opportunity to optimize one of the most powerful data engines in the world for performance and scalability across hybrid and multi-cloud environments in the AI production era.

Scope Of The Role

• Architect Continuous Evolution:Focus on the core database (SQLe) with architecture extending to AI capabilities within database functionality as well as connecting to object data stores. Shift the culture from reactive bug-fixing to proactive "System Evolution," leveraging AI-augmented engineering to resolve complexities before they impact the customer as we extend to an AI Knowledge Platform.
• Lead Performance Engineering:Lead deep-dive optimizations in query processing, cloud elasticity, and resource utilization that directly impact Teradata's bottom line and customer ROI. Innovate through the performance lens to create a more proactive lens and leverage for self-healing where applicable with workload management optimization and or identifying misbehaving queries.
• Influence Product Roadmap:Partner with Global Support, Greenfield Engineering, and Cloud Ops to ensure that lessons from the field are coded into the next generation of Teradata products.
• Pioneer Autonomous Maintenance: Implement self-healing protocols and automated CI/CD for Excellence pipelines that allow the product to improve itself at scale.

Key Responsibilities

Organizational Leadership

• Build, mentor, and retain high-performing technical experts.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, customer focus, and continuous. improvement working closely with our product engineering team.
• Drive improvements in customer trust, satisfaction, and retention through. demonstrable gains in system stability and performance.

Sustaining & Performance Excellence

• Own delivery of software fixes for customer-reported database defects, ensuring high quality and predictable turnaround.
• Lead complex performance and system stability investigations, ensuring optimal operation of customer environments.
• Serve as the technical leadership point during major system outages or recovery situations.
• Positioning the teams as the engineering frontline for escalations, providing decisive and credible resolution support.

Quality & Engineering Partnership

• Partner closely with Product Engineering to:
• Drive early defect detection.
• Improve release validation and readiness.
• Embed sustaining and performance expertise into system architecture and design decisions.
• Conduct monthly joint customer case reviews with Product Engineering to accelerate feedback loops and quality improvements.
• Ensure that customer feedback and production insights are systematically fed back into product and engineering planning.

Metrics, Operations & Governance

• Define, track, and enforce KPIs across sustaining and performance functions, including:
• Release quality.
• Defect backlog and aging.
• Fix velocity.
• Performance case resolution against SLAs.
• Lead capacity planning to ensure appropriate staffing, skills mix, and budget alignment.
• Proactively identify risks, dependencies, and systemic issues; implement mitigation plans and escalate as needed.
• Drive operational excellence with a strong focus on Lean Management and elimination of bottlenecks.

AI Enablement & Innovation

• Championing the adoption of AI-assisted workflows to improve team productivity and effectiveness, including:
• Automated documentation and training material generation from code and fixes.
• AI-assisted dump analysis and query/optimizer diagnostics.
• Develop foundational AI literacy across the organization and translate AI capabilities into measurable outcomes.

Who You'll Work With

You will lead and scale global database sustaining and system performance teams. across the United States, Mexico, Japan, and India.

What Makes You a Qualified Candidate

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 15+ years of experience leading complex, globally distributed engineering and/or technical support organizations, preferably in enterprise software, databases, or infrastructure platforms.
• Proven ability to partner effectively with Global Support, Global Customer Experience, and Engineering teams to drive timely resolution of customer issues and improve end-to-end customer experience.
• Strong track record of serving as a trusted technical advisor to internal stakeholders and enterprise customers, with the ability to communicate complex technical issues clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience leading organizations through organizational change, including scaling, realignment, or process transformation.
• Track record of driving cross-organizational initiatives that materially improve customer outcomes and product quality.
• Proven ability to inspire, mentor, and retain top technical talent while maintaining a strong customer-first culture.
• Experience defining and managing support and sustaining KPIs, such as:
• Case resolution time and SLA adherence.
• Backlog aging.
• Customer-impacting defect trends.
• Release quality and post-release issue containment.
• Deep technical expertise in:
• Relational database internals.
• SQL optimization and query planning.
• Workload management and performance diagnostics.
• Strong understanding of:
• Software and systems architecture.
• Modern software development lifecycles.
• Cloud delivery models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS).
• Foundational knowledge of AI/ML concepts and the ability to apply them pragmatically to engineering and operational workflows.

What You'll Bring

• Ability to lead calmly and decisively during high-pressure customer situations, including system outages, performance degradations, and executive escalations.

Why We Think You'll Love Teradata

We prioritize a people-first culture because we know our people are at the very heart of our success. We embrace a flexible work model because we trust our people to make decisions about how, when, and where they work. We focus on well-being because we care about our people and their ability to thrive both personally and professionally. We are committed to actively working to foster an inclusive environment that celebrates people for all of who they are.

Teradata is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, ancestry, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related conditions), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, medical condition, genetic information, gender identity or expression, military and veteran status, or any other legally protected status. We welcome and encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply and join our team, bringing their unique perspectives and experiences to help us innovate and grow. Pay Rate: 199500.0000 - 249400.0000 - 299300.0000 Annually Starting pay for the successful applicant will depend on geographic location, internal equity, job-related knowledge, skills, and candidate experience. Sales roles will be eligible for commission payments tied to quota achievement. All other permanent roles will be eligible for one of our annual incentive plans, which are based on company financial attainment and individual performance. Employees in this position are also eligible to participate in the Company's comprehensive benefits programs, which include healthcare, life and disability insurance plans, a 401(k)-retirement savings plan, and time-off programs. Specific details of these benefits, including eligibility criteria and plan options, will be provided during the hiring process and can be reviewed here:

If you have questions about this posting, please contact [email protected]