Title: Solution Engineering Manager – Application Maintenance
Location: REMOTE
Duration: 12 Months
Job Description
Responsible for the overall maintenance, support, stability, performance, compliance, and continuous improvement of National Grid's Customer Information Systems (CIS) and Meter-to-Cash application portfolio. The role provides leadership for application support teams, managed service providers, and technology partners while ensuring business continuity, operational excellence, regulatory compliance, and successful delivery of strategic technology enhancements.
Accountable for the end-to-end operational health, support strategy, service performance, vendor management, compliance posture, and continuous improvement of the Customer Information Systems (CIS) application portfolio, ensuring reliable and efficient delivery of services that support National Grid's customer, billing, and regulatory obligations.
About the role:
- Act as owner of the application maintenance operations for the Customer Billing portfolio, in partnership with strategic managed service providers, other tower leads and shared service operations teams.
- Ensure seamless operations with minimal disruption, of current Customer Billing applications, in support of National Grid’s business requirements and service level agreements.
- Work towards proactive identification of problems and corresponding corrective and preventive actions, to prevent disruption to the business.
- Drive continuous Customer application maintenance improvement and automation from both a technical and process perspective, working closely with all stakeholders, as appropriate
- Initiates and fosters relationships with business partner teams and executives, technology leaders, vendors, and partners; develops relationships that promote trust and increase efficiency and effectiveness
- Provides leadership to solution development teams, and proactively engages with teams to promote process and organizational improvements that enhance overall effectiveness.
- Prepares and presents Customer billing application/meter-to-cash support communications for executives and stakeholders
- Establishes financial plan for department and manages to plan, and jointly establishes financial targets with business partners
- Develops and maintains a network of industry contacts; performs research on industry trends, competitors, business and IT products; analyzes trends and make strategic and tactical recommendations
- Ensures system, technical and product architectures are aligned with business objectives
Operational Leadership
- Accountable for application availability, stability, resiliency, and service performance across the Customer Billing and Meter-to-Cash portfolio.
- Establish and monitor operational KPIs, SLAs, OLAs, incident trends, backlog health, and customer satisfaction measures.
- Lead operational reviews and ensure timely resolution of production issues.
- Ensure operational readiness, supportability, monitoring, and documentation standards are maintained across all applications.
Incident, Problem & Change Management
- Lead Major Incident Management activities and provide executive-level communications during critical service disruptions.
- Ensure Root Cause Analysis (RCA) activities are completed and corrective actions are implemented.
- Govern production changes and releases to minimize operational risk and customer impact.
- Drive reduction of recurring incidents through proactive problem management.
Vendor & Managed Service Governance
- Manage strategic relationships with IBM and other managed service providers, ensuring delivery against contractual obligations and service commitments.
- Conduct supplier performance reviews and oversee remediation plans for service deficiencies.
- Review and approve staffing plans, succession plans, and resource strategies for support organizations.
Regulatory, Compliance & Risk Management
- Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, audit controls, cybersecurity standards, and corporate governance policies.
- Support internal and external audits, including PSC, DPU, SOX, data privacy, and cybersecurity assessments.
- Manage operational and technology risks and drive mitigation plans through completion.
Continuous Improvement & Automation
- Drive adoption of AI, automation, monitoring, and operational tooling to improve efficiency and reduce operational risk.
- Identify opportunities to reduce manual effort, improve support processes, and enhance service quality.
- Lead technical debt reduction initiatives and lifecycle management planning.
Service Transition & Delivery Partnership
- Partner with product delivery and project teams to ensure successful transition of new capabilities into production support.
- Define operational acceptance criteria and ensure support readiness prior to deployment.
- Collaborate with architecture and engineering teams to ensure solutions are supportable, scalable, and secure.
People Leadership
- Lead and develop a high-performing team of application managers, analysts, and support professionals.
- Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning.
- Build organizational capability through coaching, mentoring, and knowledge-sharing practices.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in computer science/engineering or in related field; Master's Degree preferred
- Experience leading large, multi-year, business-critical applications
- At least 10+ years of experience working in the technology industry with 3+ years in leadership role.
- Thorough knowledge of Agile software delivery models (Kanban, Scrum, etc.)
- Ability to promote and role model a team-oriented environment
- Ability to lead technology teams in different locations in US
- Highly developed negotiation, facilitation and consensus building skills
- Highly developed oral and written communication skills; strong presentation skills
- 10+ years of experience supporting large-scale enterprise applications in production environments.
- 5+ years of leadership experience managing application maintenance and support organizations.
- Experience managing managed service providers and offshore support teams.
- Experience leading Incident, Problem, Change, and Release Management processes.
- Knowledge of ITIL Service Management practices.
- Experience supporting regulatory, compliance, and audit activities.
- Experience managing operational budgets, forecasts, and vendor spend.
- Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with executive leadership and business stakeholders.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Utility industry experience supporting CIS, Customer Billing, Customer Care, Collections, Payments, Supplier Services, or Meter-to-Cash processes.
- Experience with Customer/1, CSS, CRIS, SAP IS-U, Oracle CC&B, Kraken, or similar utility CIS platforms.
- ITIL Foundation, Managing Professional, or Strategic Leader certification.
- PMP, Scrum Master, SAFe, or Agile certification.
- Experience with ServiceNow, Splunk, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, or similar monitoring platforms.
- Lean Six Sigma certification or operational excellence experience.
- Experience implementing AI-enabled support, AIOps, and automation solutions.
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