The OpportunityWe are seeking a dedicated Incident Manager Lead - ACC Commander to lead the enterprise response to
major (M1/M2) incidents that significantly impact critical business services. This role provides centralized command, coordination, escalation, and communication to ensure rapid restoration of service while minimizing business disruption.
Aligned to
ITIL 4 Incident Management practices, this position orchestrates cross-functional technical teams, drives structured triage and resolution efforts, and ensures consistent stakeholder communication throughout the incident lifecycle. ITIL frameworks emphasize rapid restoration, defined roles, process integration, and metrics-driven improvement for incident response effectiveness.
NOTE: This job May require
24x7 on-call rotation or extended hours during major incidents. High-pressure, fast-paced operational environment requiring rapid decision-making.
We offer a flexible work environment that requires an individual to be
in the office 4 days per week. This position will be based in
San Antonio, TX. Relocation assistance
IS available for this position.
What you'll do:- Lead end-to-end command and control for major incidents (M1/M2), including bridge leadership, responder coordination, and decision facilitation.
- Ensure timely major incident declaration, prioritization, and escalation based on business impact and urgency criteria.
- Direct cross-functional teams (infrastructure, application, network, security, vendors) to drive service restoration.
- Deliver clear, timely, and audience-appropriate communications to executives, business partners, and technical teams.
- Execute incident management activities in alignment with ITIL 4 practices and organizational standards.
- Coordinate with Problem Management to initiate root cause analysis and reduce repeat incidents.
- Integrate with Change Enablement, Knowledge Management, and Service Operations processes.
- Lead or contribute to post-incident reviews (PIRs) and after-action reports.
- Analyze incident trends, response performance, and recurring issues to drive improvements.
- Leadership and Delegation: Inspiring confidence, providing clear direction, and effectively delegating tasks while knowing when to pull in additional expertise.
- Adaptability: The agility to adjust quickly and effectively to changing conditions, as no two incidents are alike.
- Recommend automation, monitoring, and workflow enhancements to reduce mean time to restore (MTTR).
- Ensures risks associated with business activities are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures.
What you have:- Bachelor's degree; OR 4 years of relevant education and/or experience ( Cannot remove or change)
- 7+ years of experience in IT operations, ITSM, service management, or systems analysis in a large enterprise environment.
- 3+ years of experience leading or coordinating major/critical incident responses
- Experience working within formal ITSM frameworks (ITIL) and incident lifecycle processes.
- Familiarity with Incident Management Tools: Proficiency with incident management platforms for automating workflows, tracking timelines, and streamlining collaboration.
- Understanding of root cause analysis (RCA) and continuous improvement practices.
- Strong crisis leadership and decision-making capabilities in high-pressure environments.
- Experience with SLA management, incident prioritization, and metrics tracking.
- Ability to maintain audit-ready documentation and standardized workflows.
- ITSM tools (e.g., ServiceNow - Incident, Major Incident, Problem, Change, CMDB)
- Monitoring/observability tools (e.g., Dynatrace, Splunk, Datadog, AppDynamics)
- Post-Incident Analysis: Leading blameless postmortems to refine strategies, identify root causes, and strengthen the incident response process.
- Executive-level verbal and written communication skills.
What sets you apart:- Clear Communication: The ability to articulate information concisely, using plain language, observable facts, and numbers, while avoiding jargon. This includes setting a clock for updates and approving content for various communication channels.
- Decisiveness Under Uncertainty: The capacity to make viable decisions with the available information, time-boxing decisions and adjusting as new data emerges
- Situational Awareness & Systems Thinking: Tracking dependencies, leading indicators, and potential secondary failures to understand the broader impact of the incident
- Calm Presence and Psychological Safety: Modeling steady behavior to enable clear thinking and inviting dissenting data or alternative hypotheses
- Leadership and Delegation: Inspiring confidence, providing clear direction, and effectively delegating tasks while knowing when to pull in additional expertise
- Adaptability: The agility to adjust quickly and effectively to changing conditions, as no two incidents are alike
- Ownership and Accountability: Taking responsibility for all aspects of the response, from initial objectives to post-incident analysis.
- ITIL 4 Foundation (required/preferred depending on org standard)
- ITIL 4 Practitioner: Incident Management or equivalent advanced certification
- ServiceNow certification (CSA or ITSM specialization)
Compensation range: The salary range for this position is: $127310- $243340
USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role. Please do not apply for this role if at any time (now or in the future) you will need immigration support (i.e., H-1B, TN, STEM OPT Training Plans, etc.). Compensation: USAA has an effective process for assessing market data and establishing ranges to ensure we remain competitive. You are paid within the salary range based on your experience and market data of the position. The actual salary for this role may vary by location.
Employees may be eligible for pay incentives based on overall corporate and individual performance and at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors.
The above description reflects the details considered necessary to describe the principal functions of the job and should not be construed as a detailed description of all the work requirements that may be performed in the job.
Benefits: At USAA our employees enjoy best-in-class benefits to support their physical, financial, and emotional wellness. These benefits include comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, 401(k), pension, life insurance, parental benefits, adoption assistance, paid time off program with paid holidays plus 16 paid volunteer hours, and various wellness programs. Additionally, our career path planning and continuing education assists employees with their professional goals.
For more details on our outstanding benefits, visit our benefits page on USAAjobs.com.
Applications for this position are accepted on an ongoing basis, this posting will remain open until the position is filled. Thus, interested candidates are encouraged to apply the same day they view this posting.
