IT Business Analyst III

Job#: 3017787

Job Description:

Job Title: Product Manager

Duration: 12 Months

Location: Chandler AZ/ Charlotte NC/ Jersey City NJ

Payrate: $50.00 - 53.56/hr

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Internal Cloud Product Manager to own the roadmap, delivery, and lifecycle management of our internal cloud platform (private cloud and/or hybrid services). This role sits at the intersection of product strategy, platform architecture, and financial/operational stewardship. You will work closely with engineering, architecture, security, finance, and business stakeholders to define outcomes, deliver capabilities, and scale the platform to meet current and future enterprise demand - while ensuring reliability, compliance, and cost efficiency.

You will combine deep internal cloud architecture knowledge (e.g., virtualization, container orchestration, software-defined infrastructure, service catalogs, automation, observability, identity, and governance) with strong business acumen in technology financial forecasting, executive communication, metrics generation, technical reporting, and capacity/demand management.

Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Roadmap

Define and maintain the product vision, value proposition, roadmap, and release plans for the internal cloud platform (private/hybrid).

Translate business requirements into platform capabilities, SLAs, and service tiers; ensure alignment with security, compliance, and audit standards.

Lead discovery, backlog prioritization, and cross-functional planning for platform features and improvements.

Architecture Alignment & Technical Leadership

Partner with architects and platform engineers to design scalable, secure, and resilient internal cloud services (compute, storage, network, container platforms, PaaS, IaC, service mesh, identity/governance).

Drive standards for automation, observability, operational readiness, and service lifecycle (provisioning, upgrades, patching, and deprecation).

Ensure architectural decisions align with enterprise patterns and target-state architectures.

Financial Management & Forecasting

Own technology financial forecasting and budgeting for the internal cloud product (CapEx/OpEx).

Develop unit economics and chargeback/showback models; optimize cost via rightsizing, automation, and capacity policies.

Provide monthly/quarterly financial performance reporting and variance analysis; recommend corrective actions.

Capacity & Demand Management

Establish capacity planning models and thresholds across compute, storage, network, and licenses.

Forecast demand trends, model growth scenarios, and ensure timely scale-out/scale-up plans.

Implement reservation/quotas and orchestration strategies to balance performance, availability, and cost.

Metrics, Reporting & Executive Communication

Define and publish product KPIs/SLAs (availability, performance, adoption, cost per unit, time-to-provision, incident rate, change success).

Create clear executive presentations and updates (roadmap, risks, financials, adoption, benefit realization).

Produce technical reporting for platform health, reliability, incidents, change management, security posture, and compliance.

Stakeholder & Portfolio Management

Serve as the primary point of contact for business units, security, finance, and operations regarding the internal cloud product.

Manage intake and prioritization of feature requests, balance risk, value, and effort.

Coordinate with PMO and peer product owners to ensure integrated delivery across dependencies.

Operational Excellence

Partner with SRE/Operations to drive incident prevention, root-cause analysis, problem management, and continuous improvement.

Ensure support readiness: documentation, runbooks, support models, L1/L2/L3 processes, release/change management.

Champion automation-first approaches to provisioning, patching, compliance, and remediation.

Required Skills & Qualifications

Experience: 7-10+ years in cloud/platform product management, technical program management, or platform engineering; 3-5+ years working with internal/private cloud or hybrid platforms.

Architecture Knowledge: Strong understanding of virtualization (VMware/KVM), container orchestration (Kubernetes), IaC (Terraform/Ansible), SDN, storage (SAN/NAS/Object), CI/CD, observability (PrometheGrafana), identity (AD/LDAP/OIDC), and governance/compliance.

Financial Acumen: Proven ability to create and manage technology financial forecasts, budgets, and unit economics; chargeback/showback models; cost optimization strategies.

Capacity & Demand Management: Hands-on experience with capacity planning models, demand forecasting, quota/reservation strategies, and performance considerations.

Metrics & Reporting: Skilled in metrics generation, executive-level reporting, and technical reporting; familiarity with KPI frameworks and SLAs for platform services.

Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication, including executive updates and presentations; ability to translate technical detail into business outcomes.

Delivery: Demonstrated success in defining roadmaps, managing backlogs, and shipping platform capabilities using Agile practices (Scrum/Kanban).

Collaboration: Strong stakeholder management across architecture, engineering, finance, security, and operations.

Preferred Skills

Experience operating or product-managing VMware/vSphere, NSX, vSAN; OpenShift/EKS/AKS; service mesh (Istio/Linkerd); API gateways; secret management (Vault).

Knowledge of cost modeling for on-prem vs. hybrid workloads; TCO/ROI analysis and scenario modeling.

Familiarity with ITSM/ITIL practices (incident, change, problem) and modern SRE practices (error budgets, SLOs, toil reduction).

Experience with compliance/audit frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST), and security controls for internal cloud (network micro segmentation, policy-as-code).

Hands-on with observability, reporting, and BI tools (e.g., Grafana, Splunk, Elastic, Power BI).

Certifications: PMP, SAFe POPM, CSM, VMware, Kubernetes (CKAD/CKA), Cloud (Azure/AWS/Google Cloud Platform), FinOps.

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field; or equivalent practical experience.

Advanced degree is a plus.

EEO Employer

Apex Systems is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate or allow discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, genetic information, registered domestic partner status, marital status, disability, status as a crime victim, protected veteran status, political affiliation, union membership, or any other characteristic protected by law. Apex will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable law. If you have visited our website in search of information on employment opportunities or to apply for a position, and you require an accommodation in using our website for a search or application, please contact our Employee Services Department at or .

Apex Systems is a world-class IT services company that serves thousands of clients across the globe. When you join Apex, you become part of a team that values innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning. We offer quality career resources, training, certifications, development opportunities, and a comprehensive benefits package. Our commitment to excellence is reflected in many awards, including ClearlyRated's Best of Staffing in Talent Satisfaction in the United States and Great Place to Work in the United Kingdom and Mexico. Apex uses a virtual recruiter as part of the application process. Click for more details.

Apex Benefits Overview: Apex offers a range of supplemental benefits, including medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and other insurance plans that offer an optional layer of financial protection. We offer an ESPP (employee stock purchase program) and a 401K program which allows you to contribute typically within 30 days of starting, with a company match after 12 months of tenure. Apex also offers a HSA (Health Savings Account on the HDHP plan), a SupportLinc Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with up to 8 free counseling sessions, a corporate discount savings program and other discounts. In terms of professional development, Apex hosts an on-demand training program, provides access to certification prep and a library of technical and leadership courses/books/seminars once you have 6+ months of tenure, and certification discounts and other perks to associations that include CompTIA and IIBA. Apex has a dedicated customer service team for our Consultants that can address questions around benefits and other resources, as well as a certified Career Coach. You can access a full list of our benefits, programs, support teams and resources within our 'Welcome Packet' as well, which an Apex team member can provide.