Director - Tech Operations

American Express•Phoenix, AZ

About The Position

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. From delivering differentiated products to providing world-class customer service, we operate with a strong risk mindset, ensuring we continue to uphold our brand promise of trust, security, and service. As part of Team Amex, you'll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career. Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express. Overview We are seeking a Director to lead a combined portfolio within our Operation Data and Analytics team that spans financial management of our Site Reliability Engineering & Application Support (SRE/AS) and Operations Engineering (OE) organizations, Strategy platform engineering, and technology Customer Journey program. This role brings together data and analytical tools for funding, availability, and customer demands into a single operating model—ensuring our data and analytics strategy is not only well-designed, but consistently reliable, accurate, and aligned to measurable business outcomes for mission critical processes.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in enterprise technology operations, including SRE, production management, and/or platform engineering
Proven experience managing large-scale budgets and global organizations, with clear linkage between financials and outcomes
Strong background in application development, data platforms, and analytics ecosystems
Demonstrated success leading enterprise-wide availability or customer journey programs at scale
Experience operating in highly regulated, high-availability environments
Ability to influence senior executives and drive alignment across complex organizations
10+ years of expertise in leading development and support teams using BI tools such as MicroStrategy, Power BI, and Tableau.
Experience with modern data ecosystems

Nice To Haves

Financial services industry experience
Experience with ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow
Demonstrated recent subject matter expertise in relevant technical areas.
Experience in attracting, hiring, retaining, and leading top technology delivery talent, and building high-performing teams in competitive markets

Responsibilities

Financial & Operational Leadership (SRE / Availability Services / Operational Excellence) Own and manage the operating budget across SRE/AS and OE functions
Drive financial discipline across a large, global organization, including workforce planning, forecasting, and cost optimization/reconciliation.
Establish transparency into development funded projects.
Lead data-driven financial analysis to identify risks and opportunities, delivering actionable insights that inform investment decisions and improve cost efficiency
Strategy Development and Support Lead application development and production support for Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), owning both delivery execution and the long-term platform roadmap
Ensure high availability, scalability, and performance of BI tools supporting critical business and operational decisioning
Partner with business and technology stakeholders to prioritize and deliver strategic capabilities, including advanced analytics and predictive insights
Drive modernization of data architecture, tooling, and engineering practices to support enterprise scale
Customer Journey Availability Program Leadership Own and expand the enterprise Customer Journey program, ensuring end-to-end visibility, accountability, and representation of a customer experience across critical customer flows
Deliver and sustain 99.99% availability targets across key journeys, using data-driven insights and standardized governance
Lead cross-functional coordination across application, infrastructure, and business teams to proactively identify and mitigate risk
Own the end-to-end lifecycle of customer journeys, establishing and enforcing governance, processes, and controls to ensure reliability, risk mitigation, auditability, and consistent delivery of business outcomes

Benefits

Competitive base salaries
Bonus incentives
6% Company Match on retirement savings plan
Free financial coaching and financial well-being support
Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits
Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need
20+ weeks paid parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender, offered for pregnancy, adoption or surrogacy
Free access to global on-site wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors (depending on location)
Free and confidential counseling support through our Healthy Minds program
Career development and training opportunities