Job Description

Position Title: Senior IT Manager, Enterprise Computing Services

Reports to: IT Director, PS NA Infrastructure, Operations and Security

Category/Shift:

Salaried Full-Time

Pay Range:

$164,900 - $183,200

Multiple factors, including Individual experience, skills and abilities will determine where an employee is ultimately placed in the pay range.

Physical Location:

1740 International Drive

Memphis, TN 38197

The Job You Will Perform:

Purpose:

The Enterprise Computing Services (ECS) Senior Manager is accountable for all aspects of International Paper's computing and storage services and operations in IP data centers, manufacturing facilities, and the public cloud, providing leadership, vision, strategic planning, vendor/contract management, and administration. This position is responsible for the overall delivery and support of global operations and infrastructure, covering computing platforms, storage, backup, disaster recovery, data center services, and cloud infrastructure.

ECS supports every business and functional group of the Packaging Solutions North America (PS NA) business. The senior manager position coordinates highly-technical, diverse, and geographically distributed IT professionals including managed service providers (MSPs), business partners, business/facility IT, application developers, project managers, and vendors to deliver and support IT solutions which meet business needs.

This position reports directly to IT Director for Infrastructure, Operations and Security.

The position may require occasional travel to sites/locations to visit with direct and indirect reports.

Primary Responsibilities Include:

• Plan, design, and supply reliable, resilient, performant, and cost-effective processing, storage, and transmission of data between internal IP applications, external customers, vendors, service providers, and other business partners.
• Direct the establishment and continuous improvement of systems and processes to ensure day-to-day operational stability across all domains of the ECS estate to meet agreed upon service levels and minimize disruption to business processes.
• Lead expert technical research, design, and consulting in the areas of platform/OS management, server and storage architecture, performance management, and strategic planning for IP's data center, cloud, and manufacturing facility computing platforms across the business, including capacity management and planning.
• Achieve high levels of customer satisfaction through monitoring and management of all ECS services that impact the business's ability to operate; influence people, process, and technology choices to optimize our services and support model leveraging proactive resolution of potential service interruptions.
• Direct the selection, testing, deployment, and maintenance of hardware and software products as well as potential outsourced arrangements.
• Establish and ensure that operational metrics are monitored, collected, and reported in a timely manner.
• Manage the overall ECS budget, resources, and project plans to meet all critical milestones associated with the ECS strategy and operating plan.
• Automate processes and procedures to allow resources to focus on new service capabilities and business initiatives.
• Adopt methodologies to ensure that defects are identified and quality of service is uninterrupted by technology changes, problem tickets are entered and resolved in order to minimize reoccurrence of incidents that impact end user productivity and availability, and service level agreements are defined for all infrastructure services that our businesses depend upon.
• Establish workforce plans that address career development, resource planning, and recruitment as required to properly maintain and staff an optimized operating model for supporting ECS services. ECS staff includes 5-7 direct reports, with approximately 100 managed service provider resources supporting the function.
• Collaborate with all IT service providers to manage and optimize the services and support necessary to maximize effectiveness and efficiency.

Key Accountabilities:

• Lead efficient management of server and storage platform infrastructure at all locations:
  
  • Deliver a deployable, supportable, stable, and cost-effective computing platform, with a strong focus on maintaining system security and integrity.
  • Provide architecture, design, engineering, and support for server hardware (across x86, Itanium, SPARC, and POWER processor architectures), operating systems (Windows Server, Unix/Linux, OpenVMS, etc.), enterprise storage, backups, patches, recovery, and refresh programs.
  • Support an extremely large installed base of servers and storage, utilizing automation, off the shelf solutions, and custom-developed tools and scripts.
  • Follow incident and problem management best practices to provide fast, effective resolution of issues.
  • Manage assets effectively and leverage change and configuration management to keep records accurate.
  • Facilitate understanding of and adherence to road maps and corporate standards around the globe through documentation, communications, and knowledge sharing within the global support structure.
  • Use innovative methods, solutions, and strategies to solve problems and take advantage of new opportunities related to supported platforms. This responsibility includes evaluation, delivery, and/or support of technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud-style computing, in-memory processing, advanced analytics, and modern compression technologies.
  • Deliver tested, documented high-availability and disaster recovery solutions for supported platforms such that critical hardware and applications are protected and available in the event of a disaster.
  • Continually identify opportunities to consolidate, virtualize, and centralize environments, while maintaining reliability, availability, and serviceability.
  • Coordinate all work activities in support of any projects in progress, including all refresh/upgrade activity to keep software and hardware at supported levels.
  • Monitor, analyze, and report on the availability, performance, and resource usage for the servers, storage, backup, and DR systems supported by ECS.
  • Ensure that corporate data centers and other IP computing environments are well-managed and always available for business processing and disaster recovery.
• Maintain strong customer relationships and meet service level expectations for supported services:
  
  • Communicate effectively and build solid relationships with key customers and other IT groups.
  • Work with team members, business partners, managed service providers, and other IT stakeholders to define and document service level objectives (SLO's).
  • Leverage systems management and monitoring tools to provide 24x7 support in accordance with SLO's.
  • Focus on process implementations/improvements for all ECS-supported platforms.
• Provide effective personnel management:
  
  • Ensure focus on employee safety as a core value of the company and team.
  • Support all staffing functions, including recruitment and retention of highly-skilled and motivated employees. Ensure employee career development and engagement, as measured via engagement surveys.
  • Maintain employee competency across relevant technologies, skills, and processes to maintain the high performance level of the team, supported by a highly-effective knowledge sharing and cross training discipline.
  • Sustain a customer-oriented culture within the team.
  • Maximize staffing model flexibility in order to adapt quickly to the changing environment and facilitate projects such as divestitures and acquisitions.
• Manage multiple cost centers totaling approximately $25MM annually:
  
  • Develop and manage annual budgets, monitor financial performance monthly, reconcile expenses, and explain variances.
  • Approve and manage ongoing spending, striving continually to improve performance and lower cost per unit, through direct savings as well as process and efficiency improvements.
  • Participate in service chargeback allocation and service cost management.
  • Ensure that growth in the server, storage, and backup resource consumption and related costs are managed and reported effectively.
• Manage vendor relationships and agreements:
  
  • Work with vendors to ensure service levels are met and expectations managed, while providing leadership in continually improving and maturing partnerships in an effort to provide the highest level of customer service.
  • Utilize targeted metrics for reporting vendor compliance/performance, leveraging scorecards appropriately.
  • Manage on-site vendors and their activities, utilizing them as staff augmentation for the IP teams.
  • Negotiate strategic enterprise agreements for key ECS vendors (including Cisco, Dell/EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, and Oracle), working with IT stewards such as Sourcing, IT Vendor Management, and IT service providers.

Scope

• Direct responsibility for a team of approximately 5-7 direct employees and approximately 100 MSP resources
• Direct responsibility for an annual budget responsibility for staffing, services, licensing, and maintenance of approximately $25MM
• Management of over 4,500 Windows server instances, 1,000 Unix server instances, 4 petabytes of storage, and 4,500 nightly backups in cloud environments, data centers, and field locations, supporting some of the company's most critical enterprise applications

Key Challenges:

The external environment, including technology, competition, markets:

• Adapting to constant changes in the external environment with regard to technologies and technology platforms
• Evaluating new products and technologies with an eye towards implementing solutions that provide significant business value, increased efficiencies, and lower cost to IP
• Managing strategic vendor relationships for standard product offerings and their contracted partners in accordance with our agreements
• Ensuring that employee skills stay current as new technologies are surfaced externally and deployed in the IP environment
• Continually rationalizing the variety of cloud, server, storage, backup, and replication technologies that are introduced to IP through projects and acquisitions

The internal environment, including interaction with others, (both inside and outside the company) policies/practices:

• Delivering operations through external service providers while retaining full accountability for quality and effectiveness
• Collaborating effectively across the organization with IT and business partners
• Balancing quality and speed of delivery with the cost of services and support, meeting business expectations for both
• Identifying, managing, and optimizing end-to-end streams of services
• Providing multimodal service delivery as required by internal business partners, adopting new processes and technologies, as needed
• Adapting to regular changes to the environment due to divestitures, acquisitions, and introduction of new technologies through projects, requiring teams to be adaptable, flexible, and extremely responsive to customer needs
• Remotely managing and maintaining relationships with support personnel in other countries, addressing logistical as well as cultural challenges

The work itself, e.g., problems, opportunities, change:

• Challenges:
  
  • Development of consistent processes and standards around system deployment, operation, and support
  • Retaining a focus on technologies that are consistent with IP's long term strategies
  • Defining and delivering on service level objectives that meet business needs with an acceptable cost profile
  • Motivating staff and partners to provide excellent service on a 24x7 basis
• Opportunities:
  
  • Further standardizing, simplifying, automating, and consolidating infrastructure to provide savings and operational benefits while minimizing time spent on non-discretionary activities
  • Leveraging skills and perspectives of a diverse, global team with external expertise
  • Using cloud and subscription services to minimize fixed costs and transition from capital expenditures to operational expense
  • Taking advantage of new technologies to improve employee productivity and efficiency, while minimizing costs

The Skills You Will Bring (Education and General Experience)

• College degree required with a preferred emphasis in computer science, computer engineering, or other IT-focused area
• 10-15+ years of information technology experience in application & system administration
• Ability to communicate effectively with senior and executive levels as well as the entire IT organization
• Highly-engaged leadership with the ability to engage, motivate, and inspire a team to achieve a high level of results from a large and diverse group
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Effective interpersonal, conflict management, and negotiation skills
• Proven people development skills
• Effective influencing and directing of others
• Ability to develop and share strategy and vision, goals, and targets, holding people accountable for achieving desired business results

Functional Knowledge and Experience

The suitable candidate for this role should possess:

• General knowledge of:
  
  • Cloud computing (hyperscaler IaaS and PaaS solutions)
  • Windows, Unix, and Linux operating systems
  • Intel x86/x64, Intel Itanium, and Oracle SPARC hardware
  • SAN storage, backup, and DR technologies
• Strong financial skills, especially in the area of cost/benefit analysis
• Familiarity with common ITIL processes, including Availability Management, Capacity and Performance Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Infrastructure and Platform Management, Change Control, and Monitoring and Event Management
• Experience dealing within and navigating a diverse political environment for a global