Senior Director, Service Operations: Unified Support (Shared Services)

Company Description

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 6000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

Job Description

The Senior Director will be responsible for the design, adoption and ongoing successful delivery of all the Service Operations Shared services portfolio offerings to both external and internal IFS customers. The portfolio covers both Cloud and on-premise customer offerings. These services are delivered within an ITIL derived service management framework, operated in ways which are compliant with multiple international standards including ISO27001, ISAE3402 and more.

As part of the Unified Support leadership team, you are responsible for the availability, latency, performance, efficiency, monitoring, and emergency response of our customer services. You will have proven capability in service delivery at a global scale on a 24x7x365 basis. You will need to be a fantastic leader of people, a careful controller of costs and be motivated by operational excellence in every aspect of service delivery.

Duties & Accountabilities

Operational Duties

• Lead a multi discipline team providing multiple, disparate shared services: 
• All aspects of operational readiness activities for Service operations
• All aspects of learning and development (L&D) functions for Service operations
• All aspects of process management for the common processes used throughout service operations.
• Automation initiatives to help drive down cost of operation and drive up both quality of service and customer satisfaction levels.
• Source code management functions for Service operations, covering merges/patches/updates for our own and customer provided code.
• All aspects of environment management
• Provision of support to customers in the usage of their Lifecycle Management services, including upgrading customers in our cloud services delivery model
• First time fix and triage in a 24x7x365, multilingual and geographically diverse service desk model
• Be the single, end to end guardian and owner of the customer experience.
• Drive new initiatives with all relevant internal customers to design, develop and deploy new shared services to meet the common needs of their businesses and their end customers.
• Collaborate with colleagues to create and maintain operational models and capacity plans for each of the functions to meet all of their current service level commitments
• Create and maintain succession plans, business continuity plans and skills distribution models to ensure continuous 24x7x365 delivery of all service commitments
• Ensure compliance with best security practices and constantly assess potential vulnerabilities and risks within their service portfolios
• Design, develop and operate suitable reporting methods for all relevant service metrics associated with the efficiency and quality of operating the portfolio
• Produce data driven improvement plans to demonstrably increase the efficiency and quality of the services we deliver

Technical Skills

A wide-ranging baseline of technical knowledge covering the core relevant technologies for the IFS product suite will be useful, including:

• Cloud based technologies (e.g. App Services, SQL Database, Storage, Redis Cache, etc.). Any mainstream Cloud platform provider is acceptable - Azure, AWS, GCP or OCI
• Oracle Database/Middleware, Web Servers, Proxies, Firewalls
• Network architecture technologies and concepts (e.g. vNets, NSGs, VPN, ExpressRoute, SSL/TLS certificates, DNS)
• Monitoring Technologies (native Azure monitoring and 3rd party monitoring tools such as Thousand Eyes, Nagios, and others)
• Security principles– encryption, authentication, authorization, integrity, auditing, pen-testing, etc. – and how these are applied in a cloud environment.

To be successful in the role, you will:

• Lead, manage and motivate international, multi-discipline, cross-functional teams
• Convey vision, direction and strategy to a disparate and diverse organization
• Instil common purpose and ensure end to end alignment in service delivery across disparate delivery teams and across your own stakeholders
• Solve problems with the ability to change approach based on information gathered during the process
• Have an openness to embrace change and to act as an agent of change
• An ability to look ahead to foresee future challenges and provide solutions to tomorrows problems today, by employing an innovative and strategic mindset across multiple areas of service delivery
• Exemplify and drive the IFS values of agility, collaboration and trust

Experience

Mandatory

• Proven extensive experience with 24x7 cloud computing services or enterprise software support
• Proven extensive experience in building, managing and growing multi-disciplined, globally diverse teams
• P&L management, budget reconciliation and financial forecasting skills
• Demonstrable knowledge of cloud computing services or IT service management methodologies and best practices (preferably via ITIL)
• Knowledge of modern, agile software development methodologies and mindsets
• Familiarity with modern ticket/service desk tooling such as ServiceNow, Jira Service Desk, or a similar tool
• Extensive experience in leading large organisations through the management of managers and by way of delegation/vision and mission rather than direct action.

Valued

• Knowledge of ITIL, ISO 20000, or a similar service delivery framework
• Working in restrictive regulatory regimes such as UK G-Cloud, US Fedramp, European Sovereign Cloud or similar governmental based service provision

Working Environment

• The role nominally operates in EU office hours but flexibility towards working hours is expected due to the global scope of the role and its direct reports
• The role includes remote and flexible working as part of its role

Qualifications

Mandatory

• A formal qualification in Computer Science / Information Technology
• ITIL qualifications OR Scrummaster / PRINCE2 / PMP certification

Valued

• Vendor provided technical certifications (CCNA, OCP, MCSA, etc.)
• Other formal educational qualifications

Additional Information

We believe that coming together as a community, in person, is important for innovation, connection and fostering a sense of belonging. Our roles have the right balance of remote and in-office working to enable flexibility for managing your life along with ensuring a real connection with your colleagues and the broader IFS community.