Regional Head of (Technical Operations Center)

APN Consulting has an immediate need for a direct client requirement:
Regional Head of (Technical Operations Center) New York City, NY
Full time/ Permanent
Role / Principal Accountabilities:

• As appropriate, leading and motivating teams to adopt best practices and to demonstrate best-practice both in their work and in that of their teams performance.
• Reviewing service availability, performance and stability, and proactively identifying service trends and taking the appropriate actions to resolve service related issues.
• This role will be the point of escalation for the clients, and as such the ideal candidate must be able to take ownership of issues that impact the local business users.
• Ownership of regional Audit and Operational Risks related to the First Line department
• Take ownership of issues and see through to completion
• Be able to diagnose and effectively communicate/escalate incidents and problems to senior management
• Be able to involve the correct resources to address any issues.
• Build strong relationships with associated IT and business teams, gaining a good understanding of their processes.
• Establish strong working relationships between Production Services and Application Development teams as well as Infrastructure and other functional groups.
• Ensure software or hardware changes do not impact application service levels.
• Coach/mentor junior members of the Production Services team to allow talent to grow.
• Recommends continual improvements in service management strategy and processes.

Skills & Experience Required:

• Must have solid critical thinking skills and be able to collect and analyze evidence from logs, monitoring and other diagnostics (such as stack traces
• Strong background with server administration (on Windows or UNIX platforms
• Strong background with network administration (Cisco; Juniper, Fortinet, Bluecoat, F5, etc)
• Must have a strong operational background (prior experience in an IT operations/support role required)
• Knowledge or conceptual understanding of other infrastructure technologies – servers, database, core services, storage, etc.
• Must be able to lead and manage an operational team
• Ability to prioritize and effectively triage issues
• Ability to effectively balance time between day-to-day support work and project-related tasks.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills. Ability to cope with business needs, respond to and address production situations promptly. Drive high level issues through Incident Management (ITIL best practices)
• Ability to communicate and act professionally with IT staff and business clients while under strict deadlines.
• Ability to work in a team-oriented setting is a definite requirement with strong interpersonal skills.
• Ability to deal with changing priorities and work with global teams
• Ability to manage and work in a cross-regional, cross-technology, 24x7 operational global team
• 1st/2nd line Support Management experience within an Investment Bank.
• Leadership skills – able to provide direction to numerous and diverse teams within and outside immediate sphere of control – experience of matrix-based management
• Proven experience working within an ITSM framework
• Experience of application management improvement processes & support practices.
• Strong Relationship Management skills. Customer-focused with gravitas and the professional manner to engage with senior management
• Excellent communication, listening and interpersonal skills
• Experience with managing changes to large and complex systems.

Desired Skills:

• Experience managing MS Active Directory or Exchange infrastructure
• Experience in managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or Unix based systems
• Experience in Virtual Systems and strong understanding of Storage Management concepts
• Cisco certification at any level
• Prior experience with middleware technologies especially Tibco Rendezvous
• Experience in managing Cisco IP telephony networks
• Advanced degree in computer science or engineering or 8+ years equivalent experience
• Experience in automation and/or development a plus

Knowledge Required:

• ITIL Qualified – Expert desirable
• Broad Investment Banking Experience
• Deep Knowledge of ITSM toolsets and concepts