Practice Architect II

TEKsystems•Baltimore, MD

1d•$148,200 - $222,400•Remote

About The Position

Here’s what the opportunity supported through our TGS Talent Acquisition Team requires: TEKsystems Global Services (TGS) is a fast-paced, growing organization with a dynamic and diverse work environment. Our strong culture is embodied by our core values— relationships, commitment, serving others and open communication. Our values guide our hiring decisions and shape how we make a meaningful impact in the IT market. We partner with progressive leaders to create opportunities, accelerate business transformation and help build the enterprises of tomorrow. We work with 80% of the Fortune 500 to address their technology, strategy, and talent needs. We innovate so industries stay ahead of what’s next. As a full stack technology and talent services provider, we partner with our customers across the globe to own change. Join us. At TEKsystems Global Services, we live in the tech world. We’re out in front of the trends and tools that shape industry and create fresh opportunities. All-in, fully engaged, high energy partnership is how we approach everything – our commitments and our people. Our people are at the center, fueling our high-performance and our inclusive culture. We’re doers, looking for doers who do the right thing. Roll-up your sleeves, thought leaders focused on creating possible. We are seeking team champions who declare success only when everyone achieves their ambitions. Sound like the career experience you’ve been searching for? Let’s partner. Together, we can accomplish amazing things. OVERVIEW: The Practice Architect (PA) II position is a highly technical position in the organization that is responsible for managing multiple consulting and delivery projects and account teams/programs. The Practice Architect II provides consulting and delivery assurance of services for clients through a range of internal and external functions in the following areas: Consulting, Account Interaction, Service Delivery and Practice Delivery responsibilities. Project sizes range from transactional solutions of $5M to multi-year outsourcing solutions of > $10M. The PA II is expected to have the experience and background to perform all the duties described below for engagements that are focused on consulting / delivery management within the defined subject matter area, including deliverables development, resource management, project execution, adherence to contract scope, customer interaction, and other key aspects of solution-based managed services. They are expected to have adequate level skills required for complex deliverable-based, fully outsourced, or extremely large-scale engagements or programs and contribute input to a larger cross-functional project / program. EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION (EVP): As an organization, TEKsystem Global Services provides a continuum of services ranging from Engagement Management to full functional Outsourcing including Offshore Centers in Canada, India and the Philippines. Our capabilities include Applications, Infrastructure, Communications, and Education services. Our model provides the ability to engage customers beyond staffing when asked for more ownership, capabilities, or methodology while enhancing client/consultant support. • Fast paced, growing organization with dynamic work environment • Leadership/growth opportunity • A supportive management team committed to developing and empowering their team members. • We have collaborative centers of excellence or practice areas that ensure project success through adherence to methodology and leveraging best practices. • Deliver cost effective solutions by leveraging on-site, near-shore (Montreal Solution Center) and off-shore (India / Philippines Solution Center) resources and expertise for your project. • Work on challenging and exciting projects across multiple practices – Enterprise Application, Risk & Security, Modern Work/AI/ML, Data Center Services, etc. • Long term engagements, Full-time, privately owned and operated (stability), employee driven • Red Hat Premier Partner • ServiceNow Elite Partner • Microsoft Gold Partner (1%) • Forbes Top 100 companies to work for • Work/life balance flexibility: limited travel, go home when work is done, no one working 60-70 hours per week like at other companies. • 200+ concurrent engagements with facilities in the U.S, Canada, Europe, and Asia. ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS: • Understand customer requirements, translate them into actionable tasks, and provide oversight, guidance, and mentoring to admin teams • Ensure engagements are delivered with the highest quality, on time, and on budget • Work with Solution Architects on resource planning to staff approved projects with resources from the team. • Provide input to technical resources sourcing strategies. • Assist with resource plan development that ensures teams are staffed with skill sets required to deliver on internal/external customer objectives. • Interview and hire qualified administrators and developers, striving to improve bench strength and augmenting project teams with contract staff when required. • Work with other members of the management team to understand project and business priorities and schedule work with development staff based on those priorities. • Effectively lead teams providing appropriate direction and developmental feedback. • Provide appropriate cost and resource estimates for all applicable phases of planned projects. • Provide input to practice methodologies, standards and leading practices. • Drive the practice methodologies, standards and leading practices downwards through the organization. • Monitor and manages adherence to methodologies and standards to ensure activities are occurring as planned. • Provide sales support in solution phases of sales engagement life cycle. • Provides project level of effort and cost estimation KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES AND PRIORITIES: Solution Delivery • Gain a clear understanding of customers’ business requirements and their technical requirements based upon the developed solution and agreed statement of work (SOW). • Understand, develop, and mature the solution design by collaborating with customers and stakeholders to manage their expectations and resolve project, stakeholder, and delivery issues in a timely manner. • Implement knowledge management strategy and communicate process and procedures for knowledge transfer. Management Responsibilities • Proactively anticipate problems; define the problem; identify possible causes; work with team to identify solutions; selects and implement the most appropriate solution. • Make key decisions based upon input from teams; solid understanding of IT Services principles; firm and business objectives and needs analysis • Understand and manage customer requirements (delivery and environmental factors) to ensure contract understanding and acceptance for deliverables, cost, contract type, timeline, risk and assumptions, and customer satisfaction. • Ensure delivery methodology is understood by team from project initiation to project closeout. • Maintain awareness for additional business opportunities and support pursuit of future business through quality results and escalation to internal stakeholders when additional business opportunities may present themselves. • Ensure Practice methodology is followed on all client opportunities. • Mentor, manage and develop project team members. Team size varies from 2-10 team members. • Provide oversight, mentoring, and training to on/offshore Automation Development/DevOps teams assigned to customer engagements • Also lend expertise to TGS internal IT teams and task forces as well as other IT projects/programs • Exercise influence at many levels of the organization up to the Director Level. • Ensures that both tactical and strategic Team Lead goals are met. • Serve as a role model by promoting and demonstrating commitment to practice methodologies, processes and standards for both TEKsystems Global Services and industry-wide, recommending process improvements when necessary. Key Technical Responsibilities The different types of projects / engagements may include, but are not limited to the following: • Existing environment assessments and road maps • New architecture designs and implementations • Modernization efforts, including: -Large-scale upgrades and / or migrations -Remediation of identified deficiencies -Re-designs and reconfigurations • High-availability and disaster recovery systems • Full systems management lifecycle (provision, deploy, monitor, patch, upgrade, and retire) solutions • Operational maintenance and optimizations, including: -Monitoring and management -Automated Deployments -Patching and vulnerability remediation -Administration and support -Process refinement and automation The primary focus of this architect role will include the following technologies / subject matter areas: • Primary technology expertise required: -Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform -Red Hat Enterprise Linux -Red Hat OpenShift -Ansible Playbook development -Software Development LifeCycle • Expertise in two or more of the following secondary technologies/concepts, in each category: -Private/Public Cloud, DevOps Tooling & Automation technologies:  AWX  Azure  OpenStack  Kubernetes  Puppet  Chef  Terraform  Git  Jira  Docker  IDEs (VS Code, PyCharm, etc)  Agile  Scrum  Pipelines  Secrets Managers  Helm Job Qualifications and Experience: Knowledge Skills and Abilities: • 15+ years’ experience in information technology and/or professional services • Frequent interactions with external customers at the Director level or above • 10+ years of "in-depth hands-on” experience automating IT Infrastructure and Platform Automation in the Data Center Operations space • Infrastructure and Operations Automation / Infrastructure as Code in both the public and private cloud • Enterprise automation technology integration and orchestration • Firm understanding of the DevOps mindset and SRE discipline • Automation pipelines (CI/CD) across multiple platforms, utilizing tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, GitLab, Bitbucket, Jenkins, Jira, AzDO, Bash, Python, PowerShell, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, and more • Ability to work remotely as primary location but can also travel to customer sites as needed, up to 25%, depending on the project / engagement • Strong conceptual and analytical skills, which demonstrate out of the box problem solving • Proven ability to appropriately prioritize and plan complex work in a rapidly changing environment • Team player with experience leading and collaborating across-teams to deliver successful solutions • Demonstrates a strong customer-service mindset and exceptional oral and written English communication skills – actively listens, clarifies needs, and translates complex technical concepts for both executive and practitioner audiences to set clear expectations • Resolves issues promptly to support development of trusted, long-term internal and external relationships Education: Bachelor’s degree in information technology or a related field, or equivalent certification and experience required. • Higher-level RedHat certification required (RedHat Certified System Administration and RedHat Certified OpenShift Administration or RedHat Ansible Automation Specialist or any derivative of OpenShift or Ansible certification) • Deep understanding of Infrastructure Platform Engineering, DevOps and SRE best practices, public/private cloud architecture, network, storage, server, and application architecture • Knowledge of ITSM concepts – ITIL Certification is a plus

Requirements

15+ years’ experience in information technology and/or professional services
Frequent interactions with external customers at the Director level or above
10+ years of "in-depth hands-on” experience automating IT Infrastructure and Platform Automation in the Data Center Operations space
Infrastructure and Operations Automation / Infrastructure as Code in both the public and private cloud
Enterprise automation technology integration and orchestration
Firm understanding of the DevOps mindset and SRE discipline
Automation pipelines (CI/CD) across multiple platforms, utilizing tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, GitLab, Bitbucket, Jenkins, Jira, AzDO, Bash, Python, PowerShell, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, and more
Ability to work remotely as primary location but can also travel to customer sites as needed, up to 25%, depending on the project / engagement
Strong conceptual and analytical skills, which demonstrate out of the box problem solving
Proven ability to appropriately prioritize and plan complex work in a rapidly changing environment
Team player with experience leading and collaborating across-teams to deliver successful solutions
Demonstrates a strong customer-service mindset and exceptional oral and written English communication skills – actively listens, clarifies needs, and translates complex technical concepts for both executive and practitioner audiences to set clear expectations
Resolves issues promptly to support development of trusted, long-term internal and external relationships
Bachelor’s degree in information technology or a related field, or equivalent certification and experience required.
Higher-level RedHat certification required (RedHat Certified System Administration and RedHat Certified OpenShift Administration or RedHat Ansible Automation Specialist or any derivative of OpenShift or Ansible certification)
Deep understanding of Infrastructure Platform Engineering, DevOps and SRE best practices, public/private cloud architecture, network, storage, server, and application architecture
Knowledge of ITSM concepts – ITIL Certification is a plus

Responsibilities

Understand customer requirements, translate them into actionable tasks, and provide oversight, guidance, and mentoring to admin teams
Ensure engagements are delivered with the highest quality, on time, and on budget
Work with Solution Architects on resource planning to staff approved projects with resources from the team.
Provide input to technical resources sourcing strategies.
Assist with resource plan development that ensures teams are staffed with skill sets required to deliver on internal/external customer objectives.
Interview and hire qualified administrators and developers, striving to improve bench strength and augmenting project teams with contract staff when required.
Work with other members of the management team to understand project and business priorities and schedule work with development staff based on those priorities.
Effectively lead teams providing appropriate direction and developmental feedback.
Provide appropriate cost and resource estimates for all applicable phases of planned projects.
Provide input to practice methodologies, standards and leading practices.
Drive the practice methodologies, standards and leading practices downwards through the organization.
Monitor and manages adherence to methodologies and standards to ensure activities are occurring as planned.
Provide sales support in solution phases of sales engagement life cycle.
Provides project level of effort and cost estimation
Gain a clear understanding of customers’ business requirements and their technical requirements based upon the developed solution and agreed statement of work (SOW).
Understand, develop, and mature the solution design by collaborating with customers and stakeholders to manage their expectations and resolve project, stakeholder, and delivery issues in a timely manner.
Implement knowledge management strategy and communicate process and procedures for knowledge transfer.
Proactively anticipate problems; define the problem; identify possible causes; work with team to identify solutions; selects and implement the most appropriate solution.
Make key decisions based upon input from teams; solid understanding of IT Services principles; firm and business objectives and needs analysis
Understand and manage customer requirements (delivery and environmental factors) to ensure contract understanding and acceptance for deliverables, cost, contract type, timeline, risk and assumptions, and customer satisfaction.
Ensure delivery methodology is understood by team from project initiation to project closeout.
Maintain awareness for additional business opportunities and support pursuit of future business through quality results and escalation to internal stakeholders when additional business opportunities may present themselves.
Ensure Practice methodology is followed on all client opportunities.
Mentor, manage and develop project team members. Team size varies from 2-10 team members.
Provide oversight, mentoring, and training to on/offshore Automation Development/DevOps teams assigned to customer engagements
Also lend expertise to TGS internal IT teams and task forces as well as other IT projects/programs
Exercise influence at many levels of the organization up to the Director Level.
Ensures that both tactical and strategic Team Lead goals are met.
Serve as a role model by promoting and demonstrating commitment to practice methodologies, processes and standards for both TEKsystems Global Services and industry-wide, recommending process improvements when necessary.