The Lead Technology Operations Analyst oversees cross-functional teams to understand complex solutions and integrations, as well as drive releases to improve solutions. This role focuses on delivering high-quality operational outcomes within a defined technology domain by designing, executing, and continuously improving processes, automations, and technical workflows. As a specialized subject matter expert, this position supports Inspire Brands' technology ecosystem by identifying gaps, recommending enhancements, and optimizing capabilities within the assigned area of focus.
The role requires strong communication skills, effective vendor coordination, and the ability to troubleshoot and resolve issues across hardware, software, and integrated solutions. It also contributes to ongoing process refinement, readiness for QA/UAT, and ITIL/SDLC execution, ensuring reliable service delivery and -real-time- transparency for customers and stakeholders. Additionally, this role mentors peers, partners with engineering and help desk teams, and supports the future evolution of tools and technologies to improve efficiency, quality, and business outcomes across the organization.
RESPONSIBILITIES - Effectively design, continuously improve, coordinate and complete all tasks necessary for successful execution, ensuring all assigned work is delivered on time using runbooks, automations, artificial intelligence, and established processes.
- Specialize in your area of focus, including but not limited to identification and solution recommendations for potential gaps, process improvement areas, innovative opportunities and continuous learning in your area of subject matter expertise.
- Have an ownership mindset where you are actively supporting, influencing, driving, and/or designing the future of your area of focus.
- Effectively communicate with stakeholders as a subject matter expert, to prevent errors, ensure success, and manage expectations. Clearly and accurately communicate with customers, stakeholders, engineering teams and leaders regarding supported technology, capability optimization and future capabilities as defined by role; including partnership to drive business needs forward.
- Have a strong understanding of how these technologies interact with components across the organization and take actions to ensure success across the organization.
- Manage vendor performance and build vendor partnerships that result in positive outcomes for Inspire Brands throughout the business relationship.
- Influence, and/or own, as appropriate, the vendor's roadmap, participation in commercial negotiations, coordinate commercial engagements and ensure vendors meet contractual, operational, and service-level commitments.
- Influence & refine future development/improvements, identify gaps and recommend areas for process improvements and/or new tools for success.
- Mentor routinely both junior team members and peers, to ensure they are successfully prepared for growth opportunities and have success throughout the employee lifecycle.
- Maintain high quality in accordance with company standards and best practices and proactively identify and suggest areas for improvement.
- Manage & execute Requests, Projects, Incidents/Cases, and Problems through designated ITIL/SDLC processes to ensure customers' real-time visibility of service status.
- Perform basic and advanced triage on reported defects to validate issues, identify configuration errors, and gather necessary and/or analyze necessary logs for a resolution. Includes partnership with help desk teams for ongoing support.
- Develop and execute processes that ensure that hardware, software and appropriate integrations are ready prior to being turned over for QA/UAT efforts.
POINT OF SALE- Create and lead positive partnerships with the brand marketing team, operations team and shared services organizations. Create assignments (including runbooks) that ensure compliance with the best practices of the brand and the capabilities of the POS. Actively help develop best outcomes for brand needs with technology-based solutions.
- Demonstrate ownership of end-to-end operational needs for POS hardware, software and integrations (printers, pin pads, scanners, coin changers, network, credit cards, order ahead etc.).
PAYMENTS- Create and lead positive partnerships with the brand marketing team, operations team and shared services organizations. Create assignments (including runbooks) that ensures compliance with industry standards (such as PCI), best practices of the brand and capabilities of the payment platform. Actively help develop best outcomes for brand needs with technology-based solutions.
- Demonstrate an ownership of end-to-end operational understanding of payments, the payments industry and how payments flow across in store & digital channels (including reporting, and non-traditional payment vendors such as Venmo or PayPal)
- Practical understanding of remote deployment tools, integration support and APIs
- Ensure payment implications are clearly understood and communicated to all impacted parties
- Research financially impacted issues such as missed payment, chargebacks and discrepancies.
- Have an understanding of how these technologies interact with components across the organization and take actions to ensure success across the organization.
- Own payments security, compliance, and risk: embed PCIDSS, enforce secure change control & chain of custody, maintain audit ready documentation, and escalate material risks/incidents with mitigation plans.
BACK OFFICE- Create and lead positive partnerships with the brand marketing team, operations team, and shared services organizations. Create assignments (including runbooks) that ensure compliance with the best practices of the brand and the capabilities of the Back Office platforms. Actively help develop best outcomes for brand needs with technology-based solutions.
- Demonstrate strong operational understanding of BOS hardware, software and integrations such as reporting, payroll, POS, inventory, tablets, etc.
MENU- Lead, organize, foster positive partnerships leading to the understanding of the needs of the brand marketing team, operations team and shared services organizations and work with these teams to receive and refine menu related requirements.
- Be a thought and process leader for all menu related needs, across all core brand technologies such as Point of Sale, Back Office Systems, Kiosks, Digital Menu Boards etc.
SYSTEM INTEGRATIONS- Create and lead positive partnerships with the brand marketing team, operations team, and shared services organizations. Create assignments (including runbooks) that ensure compliance with the best practices of the brand and the capabilities of the integrated platform(s). Actively help develop best outcomes for brand needs with technology-based solutions.
- Demonstrate an ownership of end-to-end operational understanding of digital hardware, software and integrations (cloud services, order to menu mapping, Contentful, etc.)
- Strong, hands-on, understanding of remote deployment tools, how deployments work (content + menu), the differences between upper & lower environments and APIs
AUDIO/VISUAL - Develop and maintain an operational understanding and documentation for all elements of the A/V infrastructure and supported capabilities.
- Serve as a leader in the development of an integrated AV program that best utilizes the sports bar's technology and programming packages.
- Provide subject matter expertise and escalation support for all A/V infrastructural elements and approved capabilities, including but not limited to the following:
- Content sources & related vendor relationships (TV, Streaming, Advertising, Gaming, DMBs, etc.)
- Experiential capabilities (Lighting, Sound, etc.)
- Strong understanding of streaming, networking and the combination of traditional AV with modern infrastructure.
RESTAURANT TECHNOLOGY - Create and lead positive partnerships with the brand marketing team, operations team and shared services organizations. Create assignments (including runbooks) that ensure compliance with the best practices of the brand and the capabilities of the technology platform(s). Actively help develop best outcomes for brand needs with technology-based solutions.
- Demonstrate an ownership of end-to-end operational understanding of restaurant technology including, but not limited to drive thru timers, headsets, camera system, audio/visual etc.
L2/L3 SUPPORT- Be able to create, write, debug and update scripts in a variety of languages, including, but not limited to PowerShell, Python and other brand-based languages.
- Demonstrate strong, hands-on, understanding of restaurant technology including, POS, BOS, System Integrations, Drive Thru, Audio/Visual, Payments etc.
- Recommend, design and manage software and integration support after deployment to production.
- Actively source methodologies, platforms and scripts to "shift left", moving support closer to the end user than specialized technicians.
- Have a strong understanding of how these technologies interact with components across the organization and take actions to ensure success across the organization; proactively alert possible issues prior to full scale deployment of software and/or hardware.
Service Desk- Monitor and improve KPIs which include but are not limited to (Agent Utilization, DSAT, CSAT, Survey response rate, Monthly service desk resolution, monthly call abandoned rate, Monthly speed to answer, MTTR, FCR, Call handling time).
- Coach, mentor, develop L1 and L2 agents focusing on meeting SLAs coupled with customer service mindset
- Participate and assist with incident, change management, hyper-care, escalations and major incident response & post-incident review efforts to minimize service disruptions and enhance customer satisfaction.
- Assist with root cause analysis, call trends, chronic issues and collaborates with Problem and Escalation Management as required
- Design, update & create standardized operating procedures and maintain up-to-date documentation, processes, and escalation contacts.
- Identify issues and creates processes and procedures that are repeatable for agents including assisting in the creation of KBA and training materials
Deployment - Engage with multiple restaurants, and/or restaurant owners, to ensure high levels of satisfaction before, during and after the deployment experience
- Plan and ensure logistics including scheduling, inventory staging, shipping and hardware installation with vendor partners in place.
- Manage multiple levels of complexity in logistics including scheduling, inventory staging, shipping and hardware installation with appropriate stakeholders and vendor partners
- Effectively collaborate with Restaurant Technology, Networking, Security, and Service Desk teams to coordinate installations
- Resolve, within capabilities, on-site deployment issues as they arise. Escalating appropriately when necessary
- Ensure all hardware deployments comply with internal change management processes, including validation steps, rollback planning, and post-deployment reviews
- Identify and drive opportunities to streamline hardware deployment processes through automation, standardization, and continuous improvement efforts.
- Have a deep understanding of all enterprise hardware deployed across restaurants, including workstations, peripherals, tablets, printers, network devices and kiosks
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE QUALIFICATIONS Strongly Desired: Bachelor's Degree
- Seven to ten years of progressive, relevant IT experience such as system configuration and implementation experience
- Expert knowledge of relevant applications and technical platforms.
- Expert experience with Microsoft Operating Systems and associated software such as Microsoft Office
- Proficient knowledge of at least one other operating system such as iOS, Android, Linux etc.
- Expert knowledge with ITSM frameworks such as ITIL
- Proven track record of supporting multi-modal and geographical disparate locations
- Expert experience in building business and technical requirements
REQUIRED NOWLEDGE, SKILLS, OR ABILITIES - Excellent customer service skills. Must be empathetic and continually solving problems through the eyes of the user
- Proven track record of providing effective team leadership
- Excellent verbal and written communication, with an emphasis on being able to present technical topics in an easy-to-understand way for non-technical customers
- Extremely well organized (including good project and time management skills) and high attention to detail
- Collaborate strongly with business partners, generally a combination of individual contributors, managers, directors, vice presidents and executives, through a service mindset
- Strong partnering skills and a service leadership mindset are required
- Proven track record of team member development outside of formal channels
Inspire is a multi-brand restaurant company whose portfolio includes more than 33,300 Arby's, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin', Jimmy John's, and SONIC restaurants worldwide. We're made up of some of the world's most iconic restaurant brands, but we're much more than just a restaurant company. We're a team of hundreds of thousands who individually and collectively are changing the way people eat, drink, and gather around the table. We know that food is much more than a staple-it's an experience. At Inspire, that's our purpose: to ignite and nourish flavorful experiences.
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