Senior Manager, Infrastructure Services - REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.)

Overview:

REI Co-op is united around discovering, building and celebrating better ways of working in this world, all so that folks can find and pursue a love of the outdoors. When you work for the co-op, you do your best work with the support to live your best life. And you play a part in shaping the future of the outdoors, for people and our planet. 

 

Responsibilities:

This job contributes to REI’s success by managing Technical Infrastructure teams to deliver information technology (IT) services for architecture, engineering and administration of various infrastructure groups that may include the following technology focuses: Networking, Collaboration, Infrastructure Architecture, Database Engineering, Middleware, Clients, Server systems, Enterprise Storage, Cloud Services; and for operating systems as well as development and support of various integration products. Models and acts in accordance with REI's guiding values and mission.

 

Leading the Way (team leadership, coaching and development responsibilities for this “manager of staff”)

• Identifies and communicates key responsibilities and practices to ensure the organization promotes a successful attitude, confidence in leadership, and teamwork to achieve business results.
• Supports the implementation of company programs, procedures, methods and practices to promote REI key messages.
• Challenges and inspires employees to achieve business results.
• Ensures employees adhere to legal and operational compliance requirements.
• Oversees training and development of employees directly and indirectly managed and makes effective staffing decisions.
• Conducts and ensures the completion of performance reviews.
• Provides coaching, direction and leadership support to employees in order to achieve department, company and customer results.
• Establishes and maintains visibility within the department.
• Monitors operational statistics, reports trends, variances and issues, and takes appropriate action.

Your Planning & Navigating Requirements (the plans the job is responsible for creating and executing, and how the job ensures they are implemented)

• Manages infrastructure services to include the architecture, engineering, configuration, and support of data center, distribution center, and in-store infrastructure including operating systems, network, server, database, and (data) storage management.

• Oversees and coordinates the work of subordinate managers and/or teams of system architects and systems engineers.

• Manages all infrastructure focused performance monitoring, tuning, planning and problem resolution.

• Works with customers to ensure that services and service levels are aligned to business needs.

• Delivers against service level agreements or service level targets

• Identifies and reports on service quality & efficiency measures and initiates activities to proactively improve service quality and efficiency.

• Acts as consultant to other IT departments requiring infrastructure expertise.

• Oversees architectural design and technical analysis of infrastructure systems and components within your team’s purview.

• Plans and manages upgrades to hardware, software or processes.

• Provides operational oversight to infrastructure systems to ensure maximum operating efficiency.

• Oversees teams’ provision of technical assistance services, troubleshooting and problem resolution, meeting or exceeding stated SLAs and OLAs.

• Oversees implementation of plans to ensure the security of our infrastructure.

• Collaborates with other department leaders to identify business needs; plan, schedule, and coordinate work; and ensure integration of business needs and information technology solutions.

• Communicates with team regarding policies and procedures, projects and activities in other groups.

• Guides the team in the analysis of business requests and needs to ensure low-cost operation and effective utilization of staff and equipment.

• Follows the governance process for technology projects, ensuring that project goals and decisions are based upon business priorities.

• Provides management with accurate, timely and relevant information about the status of projects, personnel and activities within the team.

• Performs subordinate manager and basic line supervision, including hiring, firing, conducting performance reviews, setting performance goals, promotions, salary increases, developing subordinates, and managing performance and discipline.

• Creates support structures to ensure that adequate technical support for end users is maintained at all times.

• Ensures that required technical tools and training are available to the staff providing support.

• Keeps abreast of technology changes and innovations in the information technology field.

We need your ‘awesome’ in these areas:

• Leadership experience in a shared platform context being a change agent at scale.

• Translating business requirements to technical needs and the inverse, translating technical problems to a non-technical audience.

• Contribute to an adaptable, mutually supportive work spirit and psychologically safe culture where people can do their best work.

You bring these technical skills and abilities:

• Experience in being a technical leader for at least 5-10 years, including contributing to and leading work such as:

• Managing distributed infrastructure solutions (e.g. Retail stores, 50-100+ physical locations)

• Managing Data Center/Co-Location Hosted Infrastructure

• Virtualization (ESXi, Nutanix)

• Enterprise Storage (SAN, NAS)

• Server Operating Systems (Windows and Linux Server)

• Networking (SDWAN, Switching, Wireless)

• Network Firewalls (Palo Alto / Fortinet)

• Voice (Cisco WebEx, NICE inContact and Call Center Platforms)

• Job Scheduling (Tidal and/or BMC Production Control)

• Automation and IaaC (e.g Ansible, Terraform)

• Cloud Engineering (AWS)

• Server Hardware (HPE Synergy, Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Blades, Rack Mounts and Firmware Management Practices)

Required Skills and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or business administration, or equivalent training and experience.

• 5+ years of progressive information technology management and leadership experience with Infrastructure and Operations Domain expertise.

• 5+ years information technology experience, including technology acquisition, applications development, infrastructure support, logistics and operations.

• Practical understanding and experience with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Information Technology Services Management (ITSM).

• Experience leading technology capital projects for large multi-unit organizations.

• Insight and experience planning and delivering systems in the competitive marketplace.

• Ability to develop department-level strategic plans, business plans and annual budgets.

• Ability to lead and direct highly-technical work teams to achieve top performance.

• Ability to negotiate contracts and agreements with information technology product and service vendors and providers.

• Excellent understanding of release and change management techniques and methods.

• Builds capacity of individuals and teams through effective employee development, involvement, communication, and supervision efforts.

• Creates a strong, mutually supportive work spirit and culture where people can do their best.

• Establishes trust and inspires others.

• Makes effective organization and people decisions in a manner consistent with REI's values and ethics.

• Delivers on commitments and holds others to same.

• Consolidates information from various sources including feedback from others to reach sound decisions.

• Considers the ultimate impact of decisions and actions on internal and external customers.

• Effectively plans and executes changes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of retail, manufacturing and logistics and distribution processes.

Closing:

At REI, we believe the outdoors is for all. We are committed to becoming a fully inclusive, anti-racist, multicultural organization. We know that there's strength in our diversity – that each employee brings unique skills, experiences, and perspectives. Every day you are driving change, fostering a culture of respect, and knowing you're backed by benefits that support your whole life. To work towards this commitment and fulfill our brand promise of inspiring and enabling a life outside for everyone, we seek employees who demonstrate different ways of working, create a sense of belonging, and actively listen and learn.  

 

Pay Transparency 

We are committed to practices that promote pay equity and transparency. As required by applicable Pay Transparency laws, REI provides a range of compensation for roles that may be hired in locations under these requirements. Factors that may be used to determine your actual salary may include a wide array of factors, including: your specific skills and experience, geographic location or other relevant factors.   

REI offers all regular employees a generous employee discount, access to health benefits, a retirement savings plan and accrued time off.  Click here for a detailed overview of benefits plans by employee profile. 

Base Pay Range:USD $141,200.00 - USD $240,000.00 /Yr.