Mgr Tech Operations-Enterprise IBM i Platform

About the role

The Manager, Technical Operations will lead the provisioning, administration, operation, support, and continuous improvement of Staples' enterprise IBM i platform environment, including IBM Power server hardware, operating systems, storage, backup, disaster recovery, security, and related infrastructure technologies. This role provides both technical and people leadership for a team of senior IBM i platform engineers, with accountability for the reliability, availability, performance, and security of highly available systems that support mission-critical business applications.

What you'll be doing

• Lead the administration, maintenance, monitoring, and support of enterprise IBM i environments and IBM Power Systems infrastructure.
• Ensure high availability, performance, stability, and recoverability of production, development, disaster recovery, and test environments.
• Oversee hardware lifecycle management, operating system maintenance, PTF management, firmware updates, capacity planning, and technology refresh initiatives.
• Drive backup, recovery, replication, disaster recovery, platform monitoring, alerting, and operational health reporting processes.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for platform incidents, outages, operational risks, and complex production issues.
• Partner with cybersecurity, architecture, application development, vendor, and business teams to implement security controls, remediation plans, audit support, and infrastructure improvements.
• Develop and maintain operational procedures, service level objectives, key performance indicators, documentation, and continual process improvement practices.
• Contribute to infrastructure roadmaps and platform strategies while leading migrations, upgrades, consolidations, modernization initiatives, and other technical transformation efforts.
• Manage vendor relationships, support contracts, maintenance agreements, license renewals, budget planning, forecasting, and operational expense activities.
• Lead, coach, mentor, and develop a team of senior IBM i platform engineers while fostering accountability, collaboration, customer focus, and continuous improvement.

What you bring to the table

• Strong people leadership and team development capabilities with the ability to guide technical teams through complex operational challenges.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, organizational, prioritization, and decision-making skills.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical concepts into business-focused recommendations.
• Ability to influence across technical and business teams while building strong partnerships with internal stakeholders and external vendors.
• Customer-focused mindset with a commitment to service reliability, operational excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Adaptability, resilience, and sound professional judgment in a rapidly evolving technology environment.

Basic qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, a related technical discipline, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 7+ years of progressive hands-on experience supporting IBM i, AS/400, iSeries, IBM Power Systems, or enterprise platform operations.
• 3+ years of people leadership, technical leadership, engineering management, or platform operations management experience.
• Demonstrated experience administering IBM Power server hardware and IBM i operating systems in production environments.
• Experience supporting high-availability, disaster recovery, backup, replication, business continuity, performance management, capacity planning, and infrastructure lifecycle activities.
• Experience implementing security controls, vulnerability remediation, audit support processes, incident management, problem management, and root cause analysis.
• Experience working with enterprise monitoring, automation, and operational support tools while managing multiple priorities and operational workloads simultaneously.

Preferred qualifications

• 10+ years of IBM i infrastructure and platform operations experience.
• 5+ years of direct management experience leading infrastructure engineering teams.
• IBM Power Systems, IBM i, ITIL, or related infrastructure certifications.
• Experience with PowerHA, BRMS, MIMIX, Vision Solutions, VIOS, PowerVM, SAN storage, virtualization technologies, and enterprise backup solutions.
• Experience supporting PCI, SOX, or other regulated enterprise environments.
• Experience leading infrastructure modernization, migration, large-scale platform transformation, or automation initiatives.
• Experience managing third-party managed services, vendor contracts, support agreements, and technology investments.