Director, Managed Service Engineering

There is no more exciting place to be than where people are shaping the future and improving the way the world works. Come join AHEAD and help us help our clients use technology to become the business leaders of the 21st century. At AHEAD, we enjoy the challenges of working at the speed of business – where offering premier B2B service is the starting point, but where personal contribution makes all the difference.

Searching for a Director of Managed Services Engineering (Infrastructure/Networking) to be a part of our Managed Services team.  Candidates are eager to learn, customer focused, an effective communicator, self-initiating and can perform most tasks without direct oversight.  This position will report to and receive directions from the Managed Services Sr. Delivery Director.

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Director of Engineering to join our Managed Service Provider (MSP) team. As the Director, you will be responsible for establishing and maintaining best practices around the supported infrastructure technologies that are core to our practice around Networking and Unified Communications. You will manage a team of network infrastructure engineers that will collaborate with internal teams, clients, and stakeholders to ensure the proper proactive care and maintenance of our customer systems, while providing expert technical guidance to our Service Desk. This is a management role that requires expertise in staff development, networking, data center technologies, and strong communication skills.

Duties and Responsibilities 

• Personnel Management & Leadership:
  1. Build, develop and lead a staff focused on supporting Network technologies. This team engages in critical customer incidents; plans and performs complex upgrades; maintains vendor-specific standards; and ensures the effectiveness and efficiency of our infrastructure technology operations
  2. Coordinate with other leaders in our Global Team to provide operations and support 24x7x365
• Escalation and Incident Management: 
  1. Lead team of engineers who collaborate with our Service Desk Engineers to provide expert-level technical guidance
  2. Coordinate staff to lead and engage on critical customer incidents (P1) to ensure swift and effective resolution
• Technical Training: 
  1. Ensure that technical SMEs regularly train the Service Desk staff on advanced technical topics to enhance their expertise
  2. Conduct and coordinate regular training sessions to keep the team updated on the latest technologies and best practice
• Upgrades and Maintenance: 
  1. Lead a team that plans and/or performs complex technology upgrades around AHEAD’s supported technology stack, such as network device software and firmware, and other related Data Center technology
  2. Lead the team that acts as a secondary resource for routine upgrades, ensuring minimal disruptions to services
• Technology Problem Analysis and Resolution: 
  1. Oversee the process to investigate and remediate technology problems, especially zero-day issues and reactive incidents
  2. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify and address problems created by other teams
  3. Perform in-depth analysis of alerts and incidents to identify root causes and patterns with your team of engineers
• Vendor-Specific Standards: 
  1. Own the development and maintenance of vendor-specific standards, including configurations, code, and monitoring parameters
  2. Ensure that the infrastructure team complies with best practices and industry standards
• Alerting and Proactive Measures: 
  1. Ensure that your team of engineers are tuning alerting mechanisms, at least, quarterly to minimize false positives and enhance incident detection
  2. Ensure that engineers perform vendor/tech alert analysis, proactively investigate potential issues, and create solutions as available
• Upgrade Planning and Change Control: 
  1. Ensure that staff develop detailed technical plans for upgrades, including recommended versions and interoperability matrices across all technologies
  2. Create a template document for engineers to complete code and software upgrade roadmaps for customers
• Documentation and Reporting: 
  1. Oversee the process for updating network diagrams to reflect the current state of the environment
  2. Oversee the process for creating and updating Work Instructions for clients, which are used to train the Service Desk in first-touch issue resolution. 
  3. Develop and maintain technology/vendor-specific work instructions and SOPs
• Data Analysis and Health Checks: 
  1. Own the process for engineers to examine and report on monitoring data and trends, such as NetFlow and analytics, to identify network performance and security insights
  2. Own the process for engineers to conduct regular health checks on customer environments to ensure the overall stability of the Customer’s infrastructure and adherence to compliance and best practices

Qualifications/ Technology Experience 

• Minimum of 10+ years of related experience
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent work experience)
• The ideal candidate has experience at a hands-on technical lead in addition to experience managing at a Director level
• Extensive experience in data center technologies and support, dealing with multiple customer environments
• Managed Services or Consulting experience preferred
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple people, activities, and priorities in a fast-paced environment
• Strong leadership and communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams
• Strong technical knowledge of networking (Cisco) and next-generation firewalls (Palo Alto)
• Relevant certifications (e.g., CCNP, JNCIP, FCP, PCNSE, VCP, VCIE or equivalent) are highly desirable
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• A proactive and detail-oriented approach to work

COMPENSATION: 

$175,000 - $225,000 USD Annual

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