Asst Dir Tech Ops
About The Position
Northwestern Mutual is seeking an Assistant Director of Major Incident & Problem Management to lead the response to critical technology service disruptions and drive improvements that prevent future outages. The role leads enterprise processes, governance, and operational execution to restore services quickly, eliminate systemic root causes, and strengthen service reliability, stability, and customer experience. The position serves as the enterprise authority for Major Incident and Problem Management, partnering across technology and business teams and using ServiceNow, operational analytics, and configuration management data to improve operational resilience. It also leads and develops service management professionals and optimizes ServiceNow Incident and Problem Management capabilities in partnership with platform teams.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- Eight or more years of experience in IT Operations, Service Management, Site Reliability Engineering, Infrastructure Operations, or Application Support.
- Five or more years of experience leading Major Incident Management, Problem Management, Site Reliability Engineering, or IT Operations teams.
- Strong knowledge of ITIL Incident and Problem Management practices, ServiceNow ITSM, Change Management, and Availability Management.
- Experience managing high-pressure Priority 1 and Priority 2 outages affecting critical business services.
- Strong crisis leadership and decision-making skills, including the ability to coordinate response efforts under pressure.
- Clear executive communication and stakeholder management skills, including communicating service impacts and recovery progress.
- Expertise in root cause analysis, structured problem-solving, operational governance, and continuous improvement.
- Ability to influence and collaborate across technical, business, and vendor teams.
Nice To Haves
- ServiceNow ITSM certification.
- Experience leading enterprise-scale, 24x7 operational support organizations.
- Experience implementing Problem Management and service reliability practices.
Responsibilities
- Lead enterprise Major Incident Management governance, standards, policies, procedures, and operational readiness.
- Direct major incident response and recovery, coordinating technical, operational, vendor, and business teams through incident command, bridge management, escalations, and recovery activities.
- Provide clear, timely, and consistent executive and stakeholder communications during major outages, including service impacts and recovery progress.
- Oversee 24x7 incident response coverage and on-call support models; lead training, tabletop exercises, and simulations.
- Own enterprise Problem Management governance and root cause analysis standards; ensure major incidents are evaluated for problem record creation and evidence-based investigation.
- Identify and prioritize recurring incidents, technology risks, and service reliability concerns based on business impact, risk, and recurrence trends; maintain executive visibility into major problems and remediation plans.
- Lead, coach, and develop Major Incident Managers, Problem Managers, and related team members; establish operational and performance goals and foster accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
- Develop and monitor incident, problem, availability, and reliability metrics; analyze outage and disruption trends to identify systemic weaknesses and improvement opportunities.
- Collaborate with Infrastructure, Applications, Cloud Operations, Site Reliability Engineering, Cybersecurity, Architecture, Service Desk, Change Management, Asset Management, and Configuration Management teams to strengthen operational resilience.
- Serve as business owner for ServiceNow Incident and Problem Management capabilities; partner with platform teams to improve workflows, automation, integrations, reporting, and adoption across Incident, Problem, Knowledge, and Service Level Management.
- Ensure ServiceNow data quality, process integrity, and platform governance.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
