Manager – Technology Operations

Provide operational leadership and direction to technology operations team(s) including employees, & vendor partners. Accountable for driving the IT Operations strategy for the group. Drive incident/problem/change/monitoring/alerting/capacity/Service level management for the area. Be accountable for SLA in 24*7 environment. Drive automation using scripting in IAAS cloud environment (IBM softlayer, Amazon Web Services, Azure). Identify recurring incidents, enhance monitoring/alerting for applications, perform SOX/access reviews, develop DR/HA plans, backup procedures etc. Manage training and small operational projects. Provide status reporting to leadership on OPS goals/strategy and communication on the issues/escalations and other critical OPS items.

Responsibilities

Product Support

• Establish and manage goals, reporting needs, key performance indicators / early indicators and dashboards for measurement of operation success
• Ensure operational readiness thru effective handoff of technologies and services into production
• Develop and/or oversee development of configurations, monitoring procedures and break/fix documentation
• Collaborate on system health evaluations to address performance issues and establish action plans
• Drive proliferation of existing technology investments and capabilities to enable business efficiencies
• Escalation point with vendors or users on current product capabilities and enhancement requests

Leadership

• Provide oversight and leadership to technology operations team to drive the IT Operations strategy for the area
• Create processes for Incident/Problem and Change/Release management. User request intake
• Define access setup and audit procedures, perform audits/SOX audits and close actions
• Define DR/HA/Backup procedures working with Application Architects/Engineering Lead, ensure update per application changes and tracking testing process for DR/HA and backup recovery procedures

Prioritize work and provide long term vision with tracking day to day activities towards the implementation of the IT Operations strategy

• Ensure knowledge transfer and cross-training of team to effectively support the business
• Develop and maintain a high-performing team through effective hiring, vendor partner management, coaching and performance management
• Manage resources defined as overall sponsors of owned technologies. Set clear expectations of this role and manage their performance.
• Provide insight into operational requirements / needs and funding conversations.
• Participate in the annual budget and project planning process.
• Setup users support procedures, communication plans and ensure compliance. Work with Team to develop technical documentation
• Perform Capacity/Financial management for assets being supported and identify Re-Engineering ideas with tracking to implementation
• Perform capacity management review and identify capacity gaps and track closure

Production Support

• Escalation contact for assigned incident/Change & problem workgroups.
• Monitor and perform routine performance/service-level audits to ensure optimal utilization.
• Accountable for scheduled and unscheduled operational maintenance tasks.
• Develop maintenance schedules.
• Collaborate with technical teams, business partners, and vendors to advocate for assigned services/technologies, ensuring stable operations/production environment.
• Coordinate efforts of support teams (internal and/or vendor) to drive service restoration targets.
• Liaise with technology teams to develop corrective action or workarounds to resolve incidents.
• Shift management and ensuring all shift activities are being performed as needed

Vendor & Service Level Management

• Primary day-to-day liaison with suppliers and vendors for assigned portfolio(s) of applications/services.

Maintain Skill-Set & Relationships

• Maintain a broad understanding of business, business needs, and how assigned technologies drive and support the business.
• Maintain strong relationship with key business partners driving technology consumption – understand their roadmap and align technologies capabilities to achieve it.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related. Equivalent experience considered.
• 5-7 years of relevant experience.
• 4+ years of experience providing day-to-day oversight/supervision to a team of technical employees and/or vendor partner resources.
• 5-7+ years of broad technical experience with proven expertise in a majority of the following areas: servers, networks, hardware, operating systems (Windows, UNIX, Solaris, Linux, AIX), middleware and related base build infrastructure and software.
• Experience and in the web and distributed computing environment.
• 4+ years of experience and proven success identifying and implementing opportunities for improvement to configurations, procedures and process to enable greater availability, capability and efficiency.
• Knowledge regarding hardware and software support with experience in Microsoft windows stack (Office, Visio, .NET, SQL Server Technologies – SQL databases, SSRS/SSIS/SSAS), High Performance Computing (HPC))
• Experience with SQL scripting within SQL server, Oracle database, Data warehouse support that includes ETL Informatica, Tivoli workflow scheduler, other schedulers.
• Experience with PowerShell scripting, other scripting languages is required.
• Managing support in a diverse Windows IAAS cloud environment (IBM softlayer, Amazon Web Services, Azure).
• Ability to drive IT operations strategy that and create standard procedures and tracking compliance.

Preferred Qualifications

• ITIL Foundation certification.
• 2+ years of direct people-management experience to include performance management.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate technical information to non-technical audiences and vice versa.
• Excellent problem detection and determination skills in multiple functional infrastructure/application areas.
• Strong customer service orientation and an inherent sense of urgency and attention to details for resolving issues.
• Proven experience creating, championing and maintaining processes, procedures and policies.
• Experience working in the financial services industry or other similar, highly regulated environment.