Sr. IT Manager, Enterprise Computing Services

Reports to: IT Director, PS NA Infrastructure, Operations and Security. Full-time salaried position located at 1740 International Drive, Memphis, TN 38197.

About the Role

The Enterprise Computing Services (ECS) Senior Manager is accountable for all aspects of International Paper’s computing and storage services and operations in IP data centers, manufacturing facilities, and the public cloud. This position provides leadership, vision, strategic planning, vendor/contract management, and administration for the overall delivery and support of global operations and infrastructure, covering computing platforms, storage, backup, disaster recovery, data center services, and cloud infrastructure. ECS supports every business and functional group of the Packaging Solutions North America (PS NA) business.

The senior manager coordinates highly-technical, diverse, and geographically distributed IT professionals, including managed service providers (MSPs), business partners, business/facility IT, application developers, project managers, and vendors to deliver and support IT solutions that meet business needs. Occasional travel to sites/locations may be required.

Responsibilities

• Plan, design, and supply reliable, resilient, performant, and cost-effective processing, storage, and transmission of data between internal IP applications, external customers, vendors, service providers, and other business partners.
• Direct the establishment and continuous improvement of systems and processes to ensure day-to-day operational stability across all domains of the ECS estate to meet agreed-upon service levels and minimize disruption to business processes.
• Lead expert technical research, design, and consulting in platform/OS management, server and storage architecture, performance management, and strategic planning for IP’s data center, cloud, and manufacturing facility computing platforms, including capacity management and planning.
• Achieve high levels of customer satisfaction through monitoring and management of all ECS services; influence people, process, and technology choices to optimize services and support models by proactively resolving potential service interruptions.
• Direct the selection, testing, deployment, and maintenance of hardware and software products as well as potential outsourced arrangements.
• Establish and ensure operational metrics are monitored, collected, and reported in a timely manner.
• Manage the overall ECS budget, resources, and project plans to meet all critical milestones associated with the ECS strategy and operating plan.
• Automate processes and procedures to allow resources to focus on new service capabilities and business initiatives.
• Adopt methodologies to ensure defects are identified, service quality is uninterrupted, problem tickets are resolved to minimize incident recurrence, and service level agreements are defined for all infrastructure services.
• Establish workforce plans addressing career development, resource planning, and recruitment to maintain an optimized operating model for supporting ECS services (5-7 direct reports, ~100 MSP resources).
• Collaborate with all IT service providers to manage and optimize services and support for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.
• Lead efficient management of server and storage platform infrastructure at all locations, delivering a deployable, supportable, stable, and cost-effective computing platform with a strong focus on system security and integrity.
• Provide architecture, design, engineering, and support for server hardware (x86, Itanium, SPARC, POWER), operating systems (Windows Server, Unix/Linux, OpenVMS), enterprise storage, backups, patches, recovery, and refresh programs.
• Support a large installed base of servers and storage using automation, off-the-shelf solutions, and custom-developed tools/scripts.
• Follow incident and problem management best practices for fast, effective issue resolution.
• Manage assets effectively and leverage change/configuration management to maintain accurate records.
• Facilitate understanding of and adherence to roadmaps and corporate standards globally through documentation, communications, and knowledge sharing.
• Use innovative methods, solutions, and strategies to solve problems and leverage new opportunities, including AI, cloud-style computing, in-memory processing, advanced analytics, and modern compression technologies.
• Deliver tested, documented high-availability and disaster recovery solutions for supported platforms to protect critical hardware and applications.
• Identify opportunities to consolidate, virtualize, and centralize environments while maintaining reliability, availability, and serviceability.
• Coordinate all work activities in support of projects, including refresh/upgrade activity to keep software and hardware at supported levels.
• Monitor, analyze, and report on availability, performance, and resource usage for servers, storage, backup, and disaster recovery systems.
• Ensure corporate data centers and other IP computing environments are well-managed and always available for business processing and disaster recovery.
• Maintain strong customer relationships and meet service level expectations for supported services through effective communication and collaboration with key customers and IT groups.
• Define and document service level objectives (SLOs) with team members, business partners, MSPs, and other IT stakeholders.
• Leverage systems management and monitoring tools to provide 24x7 support in accordance with SLOs.
• Focus on process implementations and improvements for all ECS-supported platforms.
• Provide effective personnel management, ensuring employee safety, recruitment, retention, career development, and engagement.
• Maintain employee competency across relevant technologies, skills, and processes through knowledge sharing and cross-training.
• Sustain a customer-oriented culture within the team and maximize staffing model flexibility to adapt to changing environments.
• Manage multiple cost centers totaling approximately $25MM annually, including budget development, financial performance monitoring, expense reconciliation, and variance explanation.
• Approve and manage ongoing spending, striving to improve performance and lower cost per unit through direct savings, process improvements, and efficiency gains.
• Participate in service chargeback allocation and service cost management.
• Ensure growth in server, storage, and backup resource consumption and related costs are managed and reported effectively.
• Manage vendor relationships and agreements, ensuring service levels are met and expectations are managed.
• Utilize targeted metrics for reporting vendor compliance/performance via scorecards.
• Manage on-site vendors as staff augmentation for IP teams.
• Negotiate strategic enterprise agreements for key ECS vendors (Cisco, Dell/EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle) in collaboration with IT stewards such as Sourcing, IT Vendor Management, and IT service providers.

Scope

• Direct responsibility for a team of 5-7 direct employees and approximately 100 MSP resources.
• Annual budget responsibility of approximately $25MM for staffing, services, licensing, and maintenance.
• Management of over 4,500 Windows server instances, 1,000 Unix server instances, 4 petabytes of storage, and 4,500 nightly backups in cloud environments, data centers, and field locations, supporting critical enterprise applications.

Key Challenges

• External Environment: Adapting to constant changes in technology and platforms; evaluating new products/technologies for business value, efficiency, and cost savings; managing strategic vendor relationships; ensuring employee skills stay current; rationalizing cloud, server, storage, backup, and replication technologies introduced through projects and acquisitions.
• Internal Environment: Delivering operations through external service providers while retaining accountability; collaborating across IT and business partners; balancing quality, speed, and cost; managing end-to-end service streams; providing multimodal service delivery; adapting to changes from divestitures, acquisitions, and new technologies.
• The Work Itself: Developing consistent processes and standards; retaining focus on technologies aligned with IP’s long-term strategies; defining and delivering service level objectives; motivating staff for 24x7 service excellence.

Opportunities

• Standardizing, simplifying, automating, and consolidating infrastructure to provide savings and operational benefits.
• Leveraging skills and perspectives of a diverse, global team with external expertise.
• Using cloud and subscription services to minimize fixed costs and transition from capital expenditures to operational expenses.

Pay

Pay range: $164,900 - $183,200. Multiple factors, including individual experience, skills, and abilities, will determine placement within the range.