Director

Company: Merkle Inc
Location: Southfield
Posted on: February 23, 2021

Job Description:

Director, Infrastructure Managed Services (Promotions & Loyalty Solutions) Merkle is a leading data-driven, technology-enabled, global performance marketing agency that specializes in the delivery of unique, personalized customer experiences across platforms and devices. For more than 30 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. The agency's heritage in data, technology, and analytics forms the foundation for its unmatched skills in understanding consumer insights that drive people-based marketing strategies. Its combined strengths in performance media, customer experience, customer relationship management, loyalty, and enterprise marketing technology drive improved marketing results and competitive advantage. With 9,600+ employees, Merkle is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, with 50+ additional offices throughout the US, EMEA, and APAC. In 2016, the agency joined the Dentsu Aegis Network. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit--www.merkleinc.com . Job Description: The Director role within Merkle is a hands on leadership role responsible for the Promotions & Loyalty Solutions platforms across cloud and on-premise environments. The Director will partner with key stakeholders across IT and the service line to scope, develop, and price new offerings to meet customer requirements. This position will also be responsible for providing operational support for the Promotions & Loyalty platforms. The candidate must be an accomplished leader, thoroughly skilled in a number of Core Competencies, to include development and presentation of information to C-level executives, fostering innovation, optimizing staff and operations, and providing exemplary customer service, all in support of Merkle's technology vision.-- The Director is responsible for setting technical direction, designing new and updating solutions, fostering a culture of operational excellence and establishing metrics to ensure optimal availability, capacity, and performance of solutions. The Director acts as an escalation point for Operations and Tier 3 support for customer solutions and infrastructure within the organization's enterprise technology portfolio and is expected to be well versed in the trends in the industry and be an advisor to the executive staff when making technology based decisions or developing road maps or strategic plans. They will evaluate existing technology against the marketplace and determine which technology to evaluate based on cost, functionality or demand. The Director role will report to the Data Platforms Engineering Lead and will work with a team of geographically distributed Merkle staff and contract employees. Essential Tasks and Responsibilities:

• Provide leadership and guidance to a team of professionals that are responsible for infrastructure and applications platforms for Promotions & Loyalty Solutions
• Optimize staff utilization, ensuring they remain engaged and effective in providing Operational support for all platforms
• Work with core and delivery software engineering teams to design, document and improve existing and new infrastructure.
• Lead the development of technology roadmaps that align with overall company strategy and vision of re-platforming and/or moving on-premises solutions to public cloud.
• Be well versed in the trends in the industry and be an advisor to the executive staff when making technology-based decisions or developing road maps or strategic plans
• Act in a player/coach role and be a mentor for team members.--
• Lead innovation, standardization and automation of deployments within the organization.--
• Anticipate risks and constraints and proactively work on solutions to address the risk/constraints, escalating as appropriate.
• Gather requirements, develop the delivery plan for solution and services milestones, managing expectations and coordinating delivery with developers and other client specific team members.
• Maintain in-depth awareness and fluency of the key features, functions, and/or industry trends around the area of expertise.
• Manage and prioritize multiple simultaneous incidents and Service Requests and drive resolution to technical incidents following the Merkle Incident Management Process.
• Uphold and promote Merkle's core values and culture
• Set direction for platform ownership. A Platform Owner is responsible for:
  • Leading the technology councils for platforms
  • Determining and reporting on the availability of platforms
  • Monitoring and alerting - Ensure the primary functionality is properly monitored
  • Backups and Recovery - Ensure critical data is identified/protected and a recovery model is in place and periodically tested
  • Capacity management - Develop capacity models including dynamic/elastic solutions, measure utilization and establish and maintain forecasts
  • Incident tracking - Track the incidents that have occurred on the platform and the remediation activities performed
  • Develop and present environmental metrics
  • Health checks - Periodic evaluation of the platform to ensure it is operating optimally
  • Creation and maintenance of product guides
  • Lifecycle Management - Ensure that software and infrastructure platforms are up to date
  • Ensure that our deployments are supported by the vendor and pro-actively plan for a refresh when required.
  • Software - Software should follow the N-1 rule for major release
  • Provide on-call and after-hours support as required Measures of Success:
    • Demonstrate ability to develop and retain world-class talent
    • Consistently deliver solutions that exceed customer expectations on-time/budget.--
    • Develop support processes and associated key performance indicators that are sufficient to ensure system stability and user satisfaction along with the ability to track performance gains over time. Demonstrate a high level of customer service.
    • Demonstrate the ability to work as part of a team and share knowledge with team members.
    • Successfully lead "Root Cause" efforts to identify and remediate technology and business process issues.
    • Implementation and adoption of support processes and structures sufficient to ensure system stability and user satisfaction.
    • Attain and maintain "expert level" recognition in select areas by IT Leadership and peers.--
    • Contribute to the development and evolution of reference architectures.
    • Receive positive recognition as noted on Employee and Customer satisfaction surveys, completed on a periodic basis. Qualifications: Skills/Requirements:
      • Mastery of emerging methodologies, technologies, architectures, products, and philosophies in the Managed Hosting technology portfolio
      • Expert knowledge of network and server operating systems, including RHE Linux
      • In depth experience deploying and maintaining middleware such as Apache Tomcat, Haproxy, and Redis
      • Experience with open source databases, including query optimization, replication and troubleshooting (MySQL, PostgreSQL)
      • Experience with networking, load balancing and firewall concepts and best practices
      • Experience working in a large virtualization environment (VMware)
      • Excellent software troubleshooting experience (Java, PHP, NodeJS and Perl)
      • Experience in public cloud platforms, such as AWS, GCP and Azure is required
      • Strong experience with scripting and automation tools, such as Ansible, Puppet, CFengine, etc.
      • Understanding of version control systems, such as Git, supporting CI/CD processes
      • Expert knowledge of enterprise productization processes, including developing product guides, asset management, data protection, capacity management, performance management, and lifecycle management. Education and Experience:
        • Bachelor's degree required, Masters Degree preferred in a Technology related field or commensurate work experience--
        • Requires 10+ years of broad real-world experience implementing solutions in an enterprise class, 24/7 technology environment, including 5+ years in a managerial role
        • Certifications within engineering discipline, IT industry (ITIL, CCIE, MCSA/MCSE, RHCE), or within public cloud environment (AWS, GCP or Azure) are highly desired Additional Information: Merklefosters a diverse environment that encourages original thinking about our business and empowers us to communicate with a global world of customers.--We embrace differences of opinion and diversity of thought as they help us challenge and refine our solutions. Merkle, as a best-in-class marketing agency, welcomes big ideas, and believes they can come from anywhere.-- Graduate Opportunities: Whether you're still studying, recently graduated or are already working and fancy a career hop, we could have a perfect opportunity for you.
          Experienced Hires: Leverage your expertise, challenge the status quo and grow your career at Merkle.

Keywords: Merkle Inc, Springfield , Director, Executive , Southfield, Massachusetts