Technology Operations Manager

Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC•Minneapolis, MN

23h•Hybrid

About The Position

We’re a diversified financial services leader with more than $1.5 trillion in assets under management, administration and advisement as of year-end 2024. Our team of 22,000 people across 19 countries, serves more than 3.5 million individual, small business and institutional clients. We are a longstanding leader in financial planning and advice, a global asset manager and an insurer. Our unwavering focus on our clients and strong financial foundation connects each of our unique businesses – Ameriprise Financial, Columbia Threadneedle Investments and RiverSource Insurance and Annuities. Here, we foster meaningful careers, invest in the future, and make a difference for clients, institutions and communities around the world. As a key member of the Technology Operations Center (TOC), the IT Major Incident Commander (MIC) Senior Operations Analyst will collaborate with leaders and operations teams across Ameriprise Information Technology to identify, resolve, and reduce critical technology issues leading to business impacts. The TOC Sr. Analyst will ensure Ameriprise IT Infrastructure and Application environments are set up for observability and recoverability, and that operations teams are equipped to react to and restore critical technology impacts, reporting on and delivering recommendations for any assessed opportunities for improvement. They will assess trends to identify systemic issues, and lead Root Cause Analysis efforts to prevent recurrence of observed issues and improve the operational stability and resiliency of the organization. The IT MIC Sr. Analyst will also act as a team lead, guiding fellow team members and leading continuous service improvements to team activities to support the effectiveness of the team as a whole and improve the availability of critical technology tools.

Requirements

Bachelors degree or equivalent (4-years) in Computer Science, IT, MIS, Math or related field.
5-7 years of relevant work experience required.
5+ years of technical operations/support experience with proven knowledge of - and experience working with - ITIL framework.
Solid understanding of technology landscape as it relates to IT Operations including cloud technologies and services(AWS, Azure), server management (Windows/RedHat Linux), database (SQL/Oracle/Cloud-based relational databases), information security, networking, storage and backup, containerization, and virtualization.
Thorough knowledge and understanding of current incident response techniques and technologies as well as the methods used in performing business impact analysis.
Ability to work well interpersonally cross functionally and cross-discipline at various levels as well as influence and manage without direct authority.
High critical thinking skills to evaluate alternatives and present solutions that are consistent with business objectives and strategy.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with experience creating, championing and maintaining processes, procedures and policies.
Prior experience developing and implementing scalable IT Incident Response programs.
Demonstrated experience in managing multiple simultaneous projects.
Efficient in developing and maintaining IT operations Management (ITOM) procedural documents.
Knowledge of Agile development process.

Nice To Haves

Major Incident Management certifications.
Technical Certifications in the major types of technologies/systems across the Technology Infrastructure Stack.
ITIL Certification.
Proven ability to identify opportunities for improvement to configurations, procedures and process, enabling greater availability and capability.
Experience working in the financial services industry or other similar, highly regulated environment.

Responsibilities

Closely monitor Ameriprise IT Infrastructure and application systems for potential outages or other critical issues.
Contribute to the improvement of monitors and observability to reduce the Mean Time To Engage (MTTE) Technology teams.
Engage Technology teams to Major Incident Restoration calls (Bridges) to restore service to Clients, Advisors, and Corporate users supported by Ameriprise Technology.
Command the Major Incident Restoration Bridges, driving investigation streams and coordinating troubleshooting activities to lead to improved Mean Time To Restore (MTTR) business services.
Communicate technology impacts to affected users via system alerts on corporate Intranet sites and through coordination with Service Desk representatives.
Communicate technology impacts and steps being driven to restore service to operations teams and senior leadership via email.
Share impact timeline summaries with senior leadership to highlight improvement opportunities and assess operational gaps.
Lead root cause investigation efforts to fully understand the sequence of events leading to critical business impact.
Coordinate implementation of process controls, technical solutions, and best practices to prevent recurrence of critical impact under similar circumstances.
Review for opportunities to improve observability to react to similar issues sooner.
Identify learnings to be shared with other Infrastructure and Application operations teams to prevent similar issues in other systems across the organization.
Assess for trends in critical impact to identify systemic risks that merit broader solutions for the IT organization.
Lead product improvements within the Critical Incident and Problem Management space to improve the capabilities of the team and reduce MTTE and MTTR.
Identify opportunities to improvement within the team's products, practices, and processes.
Coordinate efforts across Technology Infrastructure and Application-specific operations teams to instill behaviors and team practices that support application resiliency and recoverability.
Act as a coach and guide for follow team members with less experience and expertise.
Train other new TOC team members in processes and best practices.
Act as an example for other team members in stewardship of the organization's Technology Availability.