GDS Client Technology - Assurance Support Preparation Lead

Job description

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. Technology is at the heart of what we do and deliver at EY. Technology solutions are integrated in the client services we deliver and are key to our innovation as an organization.  

Fueled by strategic investment in technology and innovation, Client Technology seeks to drive growth opportunities and solve complex business problems for our clients through building a robust platform for business and powerful product engine that are vital to innovation at scale. As part of Client Technology, you’ll work with technologists and business experts, blending EY’s deep industry knowledge and innovative ideas with our platforms, capabilities, and technical expertise. As a catalyst for change and growth, you’ll be at the forefront of integrating emerging technologies from AI to Data Analytics into every corner of what we do at EY. That means more growth for you, exciting learning opportunities, career choices, and the chance to make a real impact.

The opportunity:

The selected candidate will: 

As part of Client TechnologyGlobal Assurance, the Assurance Production Support & Service Management team provides production L3 & L4 support for the Assurance service line application suite and infrastructure as well as Transition Management services and project delivery support. A key part of this responsibility is to ensure that all new application releases, migrations and Infrastructure changes go through a standard set of operational readiness guidelines.  

The Assurance Support Preparation Lead is responsible for ensuring smooth delivery of Assurance Technology solutions to production. The role requires excellent organization skills knowledge of infrastructure, solution delivery, and monitoring skills in Application Dynamics, SCOM, and Azure.  The role will serve as an interface between the Develop teams and the Production Support teams.  A technical knowledge of project management and implementation related stages, i.e. initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control and close software deployments is required.  Proficiency in related processes such as build management, implementation planning, deployment readiness, DevOps, and production support is also required.  The role requires high level working knowledge of interpreting the application code that is deployed and any potential impacts prior to deployment into Production as well as understanding of monitoring and actioning alerts.

The role will also have responsibility to lead and manage any new application migration into assurance. This includes analyzing/aligning the infrastructure, required monitoring and associated support processes. 

The role must have excellent stakeholder relationship management skills to successfully lead and manage project support and deployment teams to successfully deliver technical solutions to our customers.  Experience managing production deployments including issue, risk, resource, communication, stakeholder management is also helpful.  

Your key responsibilities:

·  Provide leadership and management support to drive Canvas datacenter migration from on-prem to Azure and related processes, procedures and documentation for operational teams
·  Work with Product owners and IT stakeholders to understand priorities with releases and production support
·  Ownership of proactively identifying required tools, access and trainings for seamless production support.
·  Provide guidance to align operational processes with business outcomes and priorities
·  Liaise between Development and operational teams to identify chronic issues; create backlog items through DevOps planning to address issues and track items through to completion
·  Ensure teams have adequate knowledge, required tools, and all relevant procedures are put in place to support the operational needs
·  Bring continuity to support across platforms (Azure/On Prem) and bridge the gap between support and Program teams
·  Ensure Operational teams are aligned with Development teams to have firsthand understanding of design & architectural changes to be prepared for future deployments (in line with DevOps roadmap)
·  Monitoring development and refinement across the environments.   Annual monitoring review in preparation of the Audit busy season.
·  Proactively identify gaps/risks and ensure appropriate automated processes/controls are in place
·  Provide leadership guidance to ensure Infrastructure is stable and delivers business agreed SLAs and KPIs
·  Provide guidance to streamline all critical processes like Disaster Recovery, Backup and annual maintenance processes, etc. to ensure successful and smooth migration of application from on-prem to Azure.
·  Provide Capacity planning insights to in line with Business forecast 
·  Drive annual DR failover process to test the solution effectiveness for all Azure hosted sites as part of business requirement 
·  Collaborate with all required teams (Canvas Development teams, Transition and Support) on new releases/infrastructure implementations to ensure that all deployments meet the requirements prescribed by IT Services through the effective implementation or use of approved processes, methodologies and deliverables.
·  Collaborate with Development and Microsoft teams to identify single point of failures of infrastructure and drive projects to improve resiliency 
·  Drive operational efficiencies and Capacity analysis for ARC 
·  Drive monitoring improvements in Azure and on-prem
·  Lead monitoring initiatives for new releases/Infrastructure additions
·  Provide guidance during deployments to identify and mitigate any dependencies
·  Work with relevant teams for planning and execution of the Decommission process
·  Drive major incident outages and provide timely updates to Canvas business/leadership teams
·  Participate in Problem management calls to drive root cause and corrective actions
·  Prioritizing work assignments/stories for Miracle workers Americas team

Skills and attributes for success

·  Advanced understanding of technology including networks, storage systems, servers, operating systems, applications, database and web platforms
·  Advanced programming knowledge and experience
·  Has a strong knowledge of key business processes, products and services, within agreed areas of expertise and is able to provide detailed input and advice to key stakeholders, such as Product Owners, business sponsors and Service Delivery Managers

To qualify for the role, you must have

·  Must have a background in IT infrastructure, production support, release management, IT builds product support.
·  Understands the use of IT methodologies, processes and standards for release (deployment) management. 
·  An understanding of the systems development life cycle - plan, initiate, elaborate, design, build, test, implement
·  Must be able to work within a matrix organization – balancing the needs of the customer against firm initiatives and goals
·  Must make decisions, such as prioritizing relationships to develop, negotiating with customers and overcoming obstacles
·  Identify, manage and resolve complex issues, preventing escalations, where possible 
·  Manage, negotiate and resolve risks effectively
·  Demonstrate, by example, in-depth knowledge of the EY competency principles and practices, including coaching, learning and mentoring
·  Leader and team player – sets example for others to follow
·  Create an open, honest, accountable and collaborative team environment
·  Recommend improvement opportunities for the monitoring tools currently used and assist with implementing agreed upon improvements
·  Must be able to prioritize and make recommendation to leadership teams
·  Provide guidance and direction on root causes
·  Must have a background in IT infrastructure, production support, production deployment, and IT builds.
·  Leader in the use of IT methodologies, processes and standards. 
·  Experience across the systems development life cycle with experience in all project phases - plan, initiate, elaborate, design, build, test, implement
·  Monitoring expertise Azure Log Analytics, KQL, Application Dynamics, Splunk and SCOM
·  Azure Administrator
·  Experience and knowledge of multiple monitoring solutions
·  Technical knowledge of the application environment 
·  Experience and knowledge of Project Management to drive and track status of monitoring activities
·  Advanced Microsoft Excel skills
·  End to end understanding of IT life cycle (pipeline, resource, demand, project delivery, financial) 
·  Experience delivering in an operational environment and strong knowledge of support models
·  Knowledge and experience with service delivery
·  Understanding of service delivery related service level agreements and key performance indicators 
·  Exceptional Communication skills, and experience coordinating across time zones, working with a global team
·  Experience with Root Cause Analysis
·  Ability to deal efficiently with risk planning and escalation 
·  Excellent written and verbal communication 
·  Experience working in a global IT environment 
·  Good business acumen and ability to negotiate with business partners
·  Strong customer orientation and able to manage customer expectations
·  Flexibility to adjust to multiple demands, shifting priorities, ambiguity and rapid change
·  Ability to deal efficiently with escalations and difficult situations/people under pressure, such as restoration of services
·  Ability to exercise sound judgment and encouraged to make clear decisions on operation support issues, managing customer relationships, delivering value, providing leadership and guidance to direct reports, and partnering with peer team members
·  Outstanding management, interpersonal, communication and organizational skills
·  Experience working Agile/Scrum environment strongly preferred
·  Experience working with ServiceNow preferred
·  Experience working in DevOps organizations preferred
·  Experience working on Enterprise Service Improvement Plans (SIP) and/or large program Get-to-Green plans
·  Strong understanding of ITIL landscape (preferably V3) is required

Ideally, you’ll also have

·  Knowledge of EY IT landscape and processes, preferred
·  Work experience in a professional services industry, preferred 
·  Other relevant experience in a related technical field (application development, deployment/implementation and infrastructure) 
·  Understanding of infrastructure in Azure and on-premise environments
·  Database and clustering understanding of Always on Clusters, Azure DBs
·  Track record of customer focus, based on openness, trust, and delivering on promises
·  Availability for incident escalations and key project delivery task outside of US office hours.
·  Good written communication skills with the ability to maintain process documentation.
·  Willingness to work flexible hours, non-business hours, or other scenarios required by the flow of operations
·  Detail-oriented, well-organized with ability to translate & communicate complex and abstract issues. 
·  Coordinate deployments, resource assignment and escalation with leadership 
·  Ability to facilitate innovation and new ways of working with teams. 
·  7+ years of project management experience from inception to successfully delivery and closure.
·  2 to 3 years of experience managing process optimization and improvements to reduce waste and cost
·  7+ years in driving IT operations and Infrastructure projects 
·  2 to 3 years of experience working Agile/Scrum environment preferred.
·  5+ Service Delivery experience is preferred
·  Experience working with Azure PaaS/SaaS solutions, monitoring utilizing Application Insights experience.
·  Familiarity with ITIL v2 or 3 preferred
·  Lean Six Sigma certification advantageous
·  Project Management certification preferred
·  Azure knowledge is preferred
·  Scrum and Agile certifications are preferred
·  DevOps knowledge is preferred

What we look for

·  A self-starter, independent-thinker, curious and creative person with ambition and passion