Director, Application & Production Operations

Cambridge Investment Research, Inc.•Phoenix, AZ

About The Position

The Director, Application & Production Operations leads the reliable, secure, supportable, and recoverable operation of Cambridge’s business-critical applications and production services. The role establishes operational ownership, standards, and governance across production support, database services, application operations, managed file transfer, batch processing, observability, release support, and assigned enterprise platforms. The position is accountable for service health, operational readiness, incident response, resilience, lifecycle risk, vendor performance, sustainable support models, and continuous improvement. The Director provides direct and indirect leadership for production support, database services, and assigned application-operations and release-support capabilities, as well as contractors, consultants, and managed service providers. The role includes workforce planning, recruitment, coaching, performance management, succession planning, professional development, resource allocation, on-call and release coverage, cross-training, and organizational effectiveness. The position advises senior technology and business leaders, establishes governance for service ownership and performance, leads major incidents and executive communications, builds cross-functional partnerships, uses operational data to improve service outcomes, and promotes disciplined release practices and knowledge management.

Requirements

Progressive leadership experience in application operations, production support, application support, site reliability, database operations, release management, or technology service operations.
Experience leading managers and multidisciplinary technical teams responsible for business-critical production services.
Experience operating complex production environments that include internally developed and commercial applications, SaaS platforms, databases, middleware, APIs, integrations, managed file transfer, enterprise scheduling, batch processing, web and application servers, and third-party dependencies.
Experience establishing or governing production-support models, incident and problem management, operational readiness, service ownership, application observability, resilience, lifecycle management, or related production disciplines.
Ability to distinguish operational ownership from Development, Product, business, Infrastructure, Architecture, and Cybersecurity accountabilities and coordinate across those boundaries.
Experience managing vendors, contracts, operating and capital budgets, forecasts, licensing, support services, and investment decisions.
Ability to develop roadmaps, business cases, operating models, metrics, and executive communications that connect technical decisions to business outcomes.
Demonstrated ability to use operational data to improve service availability, restoration performance, release quality, processing reliability, vendor performance, risk reduction, or customer experience.
Strong judgment, communication, collaboration, stakeholder management, and leadership through incidents, competing priorities, change, and modernization.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in information technology, engineering, computer science, business, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
Experience in financial services or another regulated, risk-sensitive environment.
Experience leading production support, application operations, service ownership, operational readiness, and major-incident practices.
Experience with database services and SQL platforms, ETL, enterprise scheduling, batch processing, managed file transfer, APIs, and middleware.
Experience with application-performance monitoring, logging and telemetry, incident-management and paging platforms, alert-quality management, and service-health reporting.
Experience with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Splunk, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, or comparable enterprise platforms.
Experience with release and change governance, SaaS and vendor-supported applications, vendor escalation, and production acceptance.
Experience supporting Azure-hosted application and database services and hybrid production dependencies.
Experience applying ITIL, site reliability engineering, service ownership, operational readiness, and business-continuity practices.
Relevant cloud, service-management, reliability, business-continuity, or related certifications.

Responsibilities

Lead the reliable, secure, supportable, and recoverable operation of business-critical applications and production services.
Establish operational ownership, standards, and governance across production support, database services, application operations, managed file transfer, batch processing, observability, release support, and assigned enterprise platforms.
Oversee service health, operational readiness, incident response, resilience, lifecycle risk, vendor performance, sustainable support models, and continuous improvement.
Provide direct and indirect leadership for production support, database services, assigned application-operations and release-support capabilities, contractors, consultants, and managed service providers.
Manage workforce planning, recruitment, coaching, performance management, succession planning, professional development, resource allocation, on-call and release coverage, cross-training, and organizational effectiveness.
Advise senior technology and business leaders on application risk, investment priorities, production service health, lifecycle exposure, and operational readiness.
Create transparent governance for service ownership, demand, prioritization, lifecycle decisions, releases, exceptions, and service performance.
Lead major incidents and executive communications, ensuring clear ownership, facts, decisions, business impact, and follow-through.
Build partnerships across Product, application development, architecture, infrastructure, cybersecurity, service management, finance, procurement, vendors, and business teams.
Use operational data to identify trends, eliminate recurring failure patterns, improve service experience, and guide investment toward high-value outcomes.
Promote disciplined release practices, documentation, knowledge management, cross-training, and succession planning to reduce key-person dependency.
Manage vendors, contracts, operating and capital budgets, forecasts, licensing, support services, and investment decisions.
Build roadmaps, business cases, operating models, metrics, and executive communications that connect technical decisions to business outcomes.
Coordinate operational ownership effectively with Development, Product, business, Infrastructure, Architecture, and Cybersecurity accountabilities.