Director, IT Incident and Problem Management

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Summary

The Director of IT Incident and Problem Management is a senior leader responsible for shaping and transforming incident and problem management to a predictive and proactive discipline. You will drive a proactive, agile approach to incident response, building and leveraging AI-driven insights to enhance responsiveness and operational efficiency. Your leadership will underpin our pivot from a product to a platform-focused service, ensuring seamless, resilient service delivery that meets our high standards for reliability and customer satisfaction.

As a forward-thinking leader, you will balance traditional ITIL frameworks with modern tools and practices, such as incident.io and FireHydrant, and embed accountability across engineering and operational teams. You will work closely with cross-functional stakeholders including Engineering, Product, and Customer Support to ensure that incidents are resolved promptly and root causes are addressed comprehensively, with the overarching goal of minimizing business impact.

How will you contribute?

• Strategic Leadership: Provide visionary leadership to evolve our incident and problem management practices, embedding modern approaches that use AI and automation and predictive capabilities to reduce response times and predict potential issues before they impact service.
• Accountability and Performance: Foster a culture of accountability, holding engineering teams and incident responders to high standards for incident resolution. Ensure robust tracking and reporting of incident response metrics, creating transparency and setting clear performance expectations.
• Platform-Centric Incident Management: Drive alignment between incident/problem management and the organization's shift towards a unified platform model, ensuring that incident management processes are scalable, adaptable, and aligned with platform objectives.
• Modern Tool Proficiency: Deploy and optimize advanced incident management platforms such as incident.io and FireHydrant, utilizing these tools to enhance visibility, speed, and effectiveness of response across our platform. Adapt methodologies beyond traditional ITIL to remain agile and customer-focused.
• Root Cause Analysis and Prevention: Lead comprehensive root cause analysis for major incidents, advocating a preventative stance through continuous improvement and resilience-focused practices. Apply SRE principles and drive actionable outcomes to prevent recurrence.
• Data-Driven Insights and Reporting: Utilize data-driven insights to inform incident response strategies. Present trends, risk factors, and improvement opportunities to senior executives and stakeholders, supporting business decisions with clear, actionable metrics.

Typical Tasks:

• Define and implement strategic roadmaps for incident and problem management, ensuring alignment with business objectives and platform goals. Regularly update practices to incorporate the latest in AI, automation, and predictive analytics.
• Oversee major incident response efforts, ensuring fast, effective containment, resolution, and customer impact mitigation. Lead executive-level post-mortems and ensure comprehensive follow-ups.
• Conduct and oversee in-depth root cause analyses for recurring or high-impact incidents, developing and deploying preventive measures across the platform to reduce recurrence.
• Collaborate closely with IT operations, engineering, product, and support teams to ensure a unified approach to incident and problem resolution, with a focus on consistent customer experience.
• Define, monitor, and optimise KPIs and performance metrics related to incident and problem management. Lead continuous improvement initiatives to ensure process agility and alignment with evolving business requirements.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives, including evaluating and refining AI algorithms and predictive models to align with evolving business needs and platform scalability.
• Drive modular and scalable incident management practices, adaptable to the complexities of a multi-service platform architecture.
• Develop and deliver reports on incident and problem management metrics for stakeholders, including executive leadership, product management, and customer success teams, to provide insights into trends, risks, and opportunities for improvement.

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What will you bring?

• Strategic Incident and Problem Management Expertise: 10-15 years of experience in IT incident and problem management, ideally within SaaS and platform-based environments, with a minimum of 5 years in a senior leadership capacity.
• Modern Practices in Incident Management: Demonstrated expertise in using cutting-edge incident management tools (e.g., incident.io, FireHydrant) and AI-driven solutions to streamline processes, drive rapid response, and enhance service reliability.
• Problem Management: Expertise in leading comprehensive root cause analysis and problem resolution efforts, incorporating Google SRE principles for preventive actions.
• Google SRE Methodologies: In-depth knowledge of Google SRE philosophies, including error budget management, service level indicators/objectives (SLIs/SLOs), and effective incident response strategies.
• Platform and SaaS Experience: Strong understanding of platform-oriented operations within B2B SaaS, ideally with experience in supporting a pivot from product to platform. FinTech experience is advantageous but not required.
• Leadership and Accountability: Proven record of building and leading high-performing teams, with an emphasis on holding teams accountable to clear standards and ensuring consistency in incident response and resolution.
• Collaborative Communication Skills: Excellent ability to influence and collaborate with cross-functional teams and executive-level stakeholders. Skilled in delivering complex insights to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Ability to drive continuous improvement through innovative practices, data insights, and strategic thinking. An advocate for evolving incident/problem management to proactively support business goals.
• Cross-cloud environments: Experience managing incident and problem resolution in cross-cloud environments, ideally with a focus on seamless integration of diverse platforms.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field; a Master's degree is preferred.
• ITIL Expert certification and familiarity with Google SRE principles; advanced certifications in cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) or incident management tools are highly advantageous.
• Familiarity with leveraging AI and machine learning within incident and problem management to predict incidents, automate responses, or identify root causes, showcasing an ability to bring innovative solutions to the role.