Associate Director, IT Operations - DevSecOps

$147,200 - $208,350/Yr

Wolters Kluwer - Chicago, IL

Full-time - Mid Level

Chicago, IL

Publishing Industries

About the position

Wolters Kluwer Global Business Services (GBS) is seeking an Associate Director, IT Operations (Health Infrastructure Portfolio Management) to lead the transformation of application operations towards a DevSecOps and lean-agile practices. This role is pivotal in utilizing AI-augmented Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) to enhance efficiency, resilience, and innovation within the organization. The Associate Director will be responsible for managing application operations and the environments associated with the Health portfolio, which includes key areas such as DevSecOps, SRE, FinOPS, Technical Debt, and Observability. In this position, you will promote collaboration with various business units, project teams, and both internal and external groups to effectively manage application operations processes and environments. Your focus will be on delivering cloud-focused operations with an automated-first approach, emphasizing product centricity. You will be challenged to integrate AI and agile methodologies to create a dynamic and responsive environment that balances reliability with optimal performance and security, ultimately delivering value to stakeholders. The role requires proficiency in formulating IT strategies, effective communication, and resource planning to support the demands of business units and their usage of IT services across Wolters Kluwer. You will develop a detailed understanding of the application portfolio, including the technologies used, business capabilities, and the skillsets required to support the applications for the respective divisions. As a leader, you will provide vision and direction to the IT Operations and GBS Infrastructure Portfolio Management teams, ensuring alignment with the company's goals. You will work closely with CTOs, BRMs, and other IT leaders to develop an overall IT strategy that aligns with the business strategy and initiatives. Your ability to build productive relationships with business leaders and application managers will be crucial in influencing how applications can enable new sources of value. You will also serve as a change agent, helping to modernize applications and their capabilities in alignment with the WK DevSecOps practice.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership, vision and direction to the IT Operations, GBS Infrastructure Portfolio Management and GBS organizations.
• Work with CTOs, BRMs and other IT leaders to develop overall IT strategy in the context of the business strategy and initiatives.
• Develop productive relationships with business leaders and application managers across the organization to influence how applications can enable new sources of value.
• Serve as a change agent to help the BUs within the respective division and Wolters Kluwer to modernize the applications and its capabilities in alignment with the WK DevSecOPS practice.
• Provide architecture and engineering advisory as part of IT Operations in Infrastructure Portfolio Management Systems on an as needed basis.
• Define and enhance methodologies and practices for the infrastructure and application life cycle management following best practice and practical experience of continuous improvement.
• Ensure that application processes (including those of external service providers) are conducted following corporate social responsibility, environmental and technical policies and applicable standards and legislation.
• Lead in incident resolution for supported Applications.
• Manage application group personnel, developing their skills and capabilities to meet our needs, and build on existing recruiting capabilities to address new needs and skills gaps.
• Work with product management to implement and manage application product roadmaps status reporting, metrics and benchmarks.
• Manage relationships with major vendors and service providers to ensure they meet our needs in a cost-effective manner.
• Conduct regular surveys of stakeholder satisfaction with application products, publish the results and, where necessary, implement action plans to improve satisfaction.
• Implement operational readiness process for the portfolio of applications in the Health division to ensure quality of services in production and development environments.
• Support GBS in creating and implementing a strategy for the Global IT Services.
• Develop senior leadership for the Infrastructure Portfolio Management mission and strategies for the Global IT organization.
• Provide the description, mission, process objectives and metrics to measure success.
• Communicate objectives and concepts internally and externally.
• Ensure that the various Infrastructure Portfolio Management roles across IT technical domains and teams have adequate resources to execute in a way that conforms with best practices and meets the needs of the organization.
• Arbitrate disputes over the allocation of responsibilities.
• Champion awareness and acceptance of the Infrastructure Portfolio Management processes among IT senior management.
• Obtain business and IT senior management support for the Infrastructure Portfolio Management processes and its associated procedures.
• Liaise with other process owners to establish integration and collaboration (such as incident, problem, change, request, problem, configuration, and release management, etc.).
• Perform high-level monitoring and review of critical success factors (CSFs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) such as DORA, that are specific to the execution of the service management processes.
• Develop continuous improvement measurements for the Infrastructure Portfolio Management processes, including CSFs, KPIs and associated metrics.
• Build partnerships and partnering with other IT team leaders to determine training requirements the delivery of the training to appropriate teams.
• Lead teams to plan and resource and support multiple Business Units and GBS IT teams' requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, Information Technology or equivalent degree; or work equivalent experience required.
• Minimum 10 years broad Information Technology experience.
• Proven ability to build and manage relationships in a matrixed environment.
• Strong organizational skills: ability to manage multiple projects with competing demands for resources.
• Experience modernizing production environments to deliver higher resilience, availability, and disaster recovery capabilities.
• Experience with mergers and acquisitions.
• Experience as a trusted advisor to partners (BU leadership, Divisional leadership, and application development leads).
• Experience application and datacenter modernization projects.
• Proficiency in process formulation and communication.
• Strong analytical and business management skills.
• Proficiency in working in a fast-paced, complex, dynamic and multicultural business environment.
• Ability to build relationships and influence individuals at all levels of the organization.
• In-depth knowledge of system management processes, leadership and interpersonal skills and experience.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and experience.
• Demonstrated experience in mentoring, coaching, performance feedback, regular evaluation.
• Demonstrated analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Experience with ITIL and ITSM Processes.
• Experience with application life cycle Processes.
• Experience with traditional and Cloud operational processes.
• Demonstrated experience working with several geographically diverse associates and vendor partners.
• Demonstrated budget management, tracking and forecasting experience.
• Demonstrated on-time and on-budget system delivery experience.
• Knowledge of organization policies and procedures.

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, & Vision Plans
• 401(k)
• FSA/HSA
• Commuter Benefits
• Tuition Assistance Plan
• Vacation and Sick Time
• Paid Parental Leave