Director, Infrastructure and Operations - Saint Paul, United States - Metropolitan Council

Description

WHO WE ARE
This position is eligible for a hybrid (both remote and onsite) telework arrangement. Candidate's permanent residence must be in Minnesota or Wisconsin.

We are the Metropolitan Council, the regional government for the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area. We plan 30 years ahead for the future of the metropolitan area and provide regional transportation, wastewater, and housing services.

We are committed to supporting a diverse workforce that reflects the communities we serve.

Information Services is the central IT department supporting all divisions of the Metropolitan Council. Our 140 team members provide technology, practices and innovative solutions that enable the core services of the Council.

How your work would contribute to our organization and the Twin Cities region:
The Metropolitan Council seeks a driven self-starter to serve as our seniormost leader for Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure and Operations (I&O). The Director of Infrastructure and Operations is responsible for the strategy, architecture, and practice of technology and customer support. The successful candidate will be a people-centric change leader helping the organization move at pace as we grow to embrace a new strategic vision.

It is CRITICAL you completely fill out the application form as the hiring manager will likely not see your attached resumed. Get some coffee, this is a long application process but worth it.

People Leadership

This effective leader of people will use a "people first" approach to ensuring that teams are engaged, informed, and heard and that customer outcomes and thereby the team's success is measured in meaningful human terms. The most critical capability of this position is the ability to lead and grow people while ensuring constant and clear expectations are established and met. People leadership will be expressed in numerous ways, including but not limited to building managers into leaders and deliberately growing a culture that embraces the quick pace of change and ambiguity inherent in a modern agile IT environment while creating a safe place for staff to contribute their perspectives to the work at hand and challenge long-held assumptions. This leader will have strong managerial courage and a developed management and leadership philosophy that they regularly articulate through the practice of their role, including being an advocate for diversity in all its forms, recognizing and promoting the inherent value a diverse team represents.

Customer Focused Leadership

This leader will build effective partnerships with people across the Council. They will listen to customers' needs and turn those needs into business outcomes advanced by technology. They will work with their team to provide solutions to business problems. They will help the business understand the business capabilities technology could enable and introduce solutions.

Resource Leadership

This senior role is responsible for leading the staff and managers of the areas of service desk, device support (aka desktop support), networking, telecommunications (phone and video conference) and infrastructure (servers, storage, backups). These units' combined operating and capital costs are measured in the tens of millions of dollars a year. This position will lead the planning, optimization, service costing and benchmarking of these significant resource pools in the context of a value-sensitive organization that seeks the highest ROI and clear business cases that investigate numerous alternatives. This leader will take seriously their fiduciary responsibility as a steward of the public's resources and trust.

Leadership Team Engagement

This leader will spend a significant amount of their time working directly with the CIO and DCIO building first-pass strategy for the entire Information Services department and contributing to the broader Council approaches. This role must be able to see beyond their direct report structure, beyond the IS department, and bring a Met Council and broader industry perspective to our work. This role's "first team" will be the CIO and DCIO and will support the team by complementing the capabilities and approaches of the group in the execution of our shared vision.

Process/Program Leadership

The Director of I&O's purview includes several areas of IS and Council-wide process leadership, including Enterprise Architecture and many aspects of ITIL such as change, incident, and problem management methodology. In this role, the director will build out our EA practice in a way that's inclusive of all technology decision making within IS and serves as a starting point for a Council-wide technology architecture governance process. The director will ensure the architecture governance reconciles current cloud trends and our current on-prem centric approach creating clarity around the role of the cloud in the organization. They will also define a coherent approach to cloud usage, optimizing resources and costs.

Full Salary Range: $114,192 - $185,266 Annually

The starting salary will be based on the selected candidate's experience, skills, education, and internal salary equity, and includes a generous benefits package.

Benefits: Great work/life balance, insurance starting on day one, MN State Retirement Program pension, in-house clinic, salary continuance for injury or illness, 13 paid holidays per year plus generous annual leave, employee development, free Metro Transit rides, and much more
What you would do in this job

• Responsible for ensuring clear bidirectional communication and a shared understanding across all levels of management, SMEs, and leadership. Keeping everyone "in the know," making teams' perspectives clear to leadership and leadership imperatives, and the reasoning behind them, clear to teams. Ensuring everyone is heard.
• Responsible for ensuring a focus on and expectations around productive soft skills and behaviors, including communication and fostering teamwork.
• Help create a culture that embraces change and lives the IS norms of behavior.
• Continuously assessing the pulse and engagement of teams, creating, and executing an engagement strategy.
• Responsible for ensuring a common performance practice across IS, including a calibrated rating process.
• Human capacity planning, including supporting managers in the assessment and classification of work, development of positions and ladders, and optimal distribution between roles.
• Build out internal capabilities and reducing dependence on vendors, resellers, and consultants.
• Work with the CIO and DCIO to initiate strategy and create common practices across all of IS.
• Build IT governance strategy, implementing that strategy, and sponsoring the process, including EA.
• Articulate the costs of services, creating rates for those services and SLAs, and benchmarking services to industry providers.
• Responsible for ensuring the creation of development roadmaps that outline our future state needs and empower and support staff embracing those opportunities.
• Provide strategic budget oversight for departments/functions and holding management accountable for operating within the operating and capital budgets.
• Conduct a regular effectiveness review/benchmarking exercise of all lines with a focus on improving quality, performance, productivity initiatives, and cost analysis.

What education and experience are required for this job (minimum qualifications)

A Master's degree in any field and six (6) or more years of experience in information technology with at least five (5) of those years in organization(s) at least as complex as the Metropolitan Council's (100+ IT staff) and including five (5) years of management experience.

ORA Bachelor's degree in any field and eight (8) or more years of experience in information technology with at least five (5) of those years in an organization(s) at least as complex as the Metropolitan Council's (100+ IT staff) and including five (5) years of management experience.
What additional skills and experiences would be helpful in this job (desired qualifications):

• Master's degree in management, leadership, organizational effectiveness, or a related field.
• Demonstrated record of continuous professional development in leadership and management.
• Demonstrated experience leading teams embracing change with a "people first" approach.
• Demonstrated experience in strategic planning.
• Demonstrated experience building organization-wide process and creating buy in for it.
• Experience fostering equity, diversity, and inclusion competency and understanding.

What knowledge, skills and abilities you should have within the first six months on the job:

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex organizations through change.
• Exceptional communication skills, written, verbal, and through presentations.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to develop positive working relationships with all levels of the enterprise.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize human outcomes, including development of soft skills, instilling organizational values/norms, and building a safe space for a healthy challenge culture to develop.
• Skill to be self-aware, accept, act on, and provide constructive feedback.
• Knowledge of advanced leadership and management practices.
• Ability to develop, implement, and navigate IT governance.
• Ability to create clarity in chaotic circumstances and prioritize.
• Demonstrated ability to develop a deep and broad understanding of an organization's business.
• Advanced knowledge of resource planning, both human and material.
• Knowledge of Enterprise Architecture.
• Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership techniques, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure changing environment.

What you can expect from us:

• We offer the opportunity to make a difference and positively influence the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
• We encourage our employees to develop their skills through on-site training and tuition reimbursement.
• We provide a competitive salary, excellent benefits and a good work/life balance.

Additional information

Union: Non-Represented
Grade: L
FLSA Status: Exempt
Safety Sensitive: No

What your work environment would be:
You would perform your work in a standard office setting. You may be required to travel between your primary work site to other sites.

What steps the recruitment process involves:
1. We review your minimum qualifications.
2. We rate your education and experience.
3. We conduct a structured panel interview.
4. We conduct a selection interview.

Once you have successfully completed the steps above, then:

If you are new to the Metropolitan Council, you must pass a drug test (safety sensitive positions only), and a background check which verifies education, employment, and criminal history. A driving record check and/or physical may be conducted if applicable to the job. If you have a criminal conviction, you do not automatically fail. The Metropolitan Council considers felony, gross misdemeanor and misdemeanor convictions on a case-by-case basis, based on whether they are related to the job and whether the candidate has demonstrated adequate rehabilitation.

If you are already an employee of the Metropolitan Council, you must pass a drug test (if moving from a non-safety sensitive position to a safety sensitive position) and criminal background check if the job you're applying for is safety sensitive, is a supervisory or management job, is in the Finance, Information Services, Audit, or Human Resources departments, or has access to financial records, files/databases, cash, vouchers or transit fare cards. A driving record check and/or physical may be conducted if applicable to the position.

IMPORTANT: If you make a false statement or withhold information, you may be barred from job consideration.

Security Policy:
This position involves direct access to Criminal Justice Information (CJI) as defined by the FBI CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Services) Security Policy. In accordance with section of the FBI CJIS Security Policy, final candidates must agree to submit to a state of residence and national fingerprint-based record check. If the result of the record check reveals criminal convictions, the nature and circumstances of those convictions will be reviewed by the Metropolitan Transit Police Department and/or the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to determine if access to Criminal Justice Information would be permissible. If it is determined that access to Criminal Justice Information would not be permissible, the candidate will no longer be eligible for this position.

The Metropolitan Council is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action, and veteran-friendly employer. The Council is committed to a workforce that reflects the diversity of the region and strongly encourages persons of color, members of the LGBTQ community, individuals with disabilities, women, and veterans to apply.

If you have a disability that requires accommodation during the selection process, please email .