The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) takes great pride in connecting the Commonwealth’s residents and communities. MassDOT is responsible for developing, implementing, and coordinating transportation policies and projects for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and to efficiently plan, design, construct, and maintain a safe statewide transportation system which effectively meets the transportation needs of the Commonwealth. MassDOT’ s divisions include Highway, Aeronautics, Registry, Rail & Transit and Programs & Planning. There are approximately 3,600 employees that work in the department. In addition, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Regional Transit Authorities (RTA) are subject to oversight by MassDOT.

MassDOT is seeking to hire a Manager of Applications Operations to join the Applications Operations Team within the MassDOT technology division. The Application Operations Team is responsible for providing production support by handling incidents and requests that have been escalated by lower tier support teams. The Manager of Applications Operations is responsible for managing the resource allocation and timely resolution of all application support efforts. This individual will provide direction to staff, collaborate with other IT teams, and provide technical advice. The successful candidate must have advanced technical knowledge and experience to deliver innovative solutions and excellent customer service to MassDOT and the citizens of the Commonwealth. The incumbent of this role will be responsible for the incident, major incident, and change management process to ensure the overall reliability and stability of the IT environment within MassDOT.

The primary work location for this role will be at 10 Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116. The work schedule for this position is Monday thru Friday, 9AM to 5PM EST. The majority of time will be spent working from a home location; however, this position would be expected to follow a hybrid model of reporting to work that combines in-office workdays and work from home days as needed.

Responsibilities:

• Manage all major incidents to ensure production issues are resolved in a timely manner, root cause analysis is complete & communicated, and change orders are assigned to the correct teams for prevention of reoccurring issues.
• Effectively communicate status of production support issues from identification to resolution to various management and stakeholder groups.
• Manages the day-to-day activities of the team responsible for the availability of applications that support various areas of the business with MassDOT.
• Daily monitoring of business area applications: publishing reports on system availability.
• Set and maintain alerts with application monitoring software to ensure performance anomalies are reported immediately.
• Work alongside application development & infrastructure teams to support changes, fixes, and enhancements to applications.
• Establishes priorities and schedules for resources to meet needs of the business and reflect organization priorities.
• Manages performance and professional development of staff, including performance reviews, feedback, coaching, and training to maximize team performance.
• Approves time and vacations and completes all parts of EPRS per HR schedule.
• Clearly defines team member roles and responsibilities and eliminates single points of failure within the team through cross-training and knowledge sharing.
• Ensures that team members understand and follow applicable MassDOT and Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) policies.
• Lead and enforce the incident management process.
• Understands and respects the collective bargaining agreements (CBA’s).
• Ensures performance of the team with telephone, voicemail, email and ticketing systems.
• Responsible for notifying the appropriate personnel on applications and infrastructure related system outages.
• Ensures effective troubleshooting and configuration of applications to optimize performance.
• Works with external vendors to escalate and resolve incidents as it relates to application support.
• Contributes to the creation, facilitation and maintenance of FAQ documents, knowledge articles and user guides.
• Tracks and reports on metrics to show compliance with established service level agreements (SLA’s).
• Ensures systems are supported in an efficient manner ensuring minimal disruptions and downtime in line with agreed SLAs.
• Prioritizes team’s response to incidents and manages performance to agreed SLAs.
• Identifies opportunities for process improvement and proactive application monitoring.
• Provides direction and guidance to internal staff and vendors on the diagnosis and resolution to systems issues.
• Interacts with all levels of staff and management to identify and resolve issues as they arise and to support their system requirements.
• Works directly with the Project Management group on the management of larger projects, including scope development, scheduling of resources, and project timelines in preparation for the transition from project to production.
• Facilitates communication upward and across project teams including project status, cost information, justifications for variances and technical information (architecture, design, and implementation objectives).
• Participates in budgeting and forecasting activities.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Minimum five (5) to seven (7) years of relevant work experience supporting applications, preferably in a service desk environment with a helpdesk system and call queue.
• Three (3) plus years of experience in management in Information Technology.
• Advanced knowledge and concepts of application support in relation to software and hardware.
• Excellent customer service skills and strong aptitude to learn and adapt to new technologies.
• Advanced knowledge troubleshooting applications, network, and other technical problems.
• Demonstrated experience of running incident management processes and developing SLA’s.
• Excellent verbal, interpersonal, and written communication, and documentation skills.
• Must be process oriented and have strong organization skills.
• Excellent day-to-day operating management skills.
• Ability to execute coupled with a disciplined approach and ability to effectively manage risk.
• Proven leadership, team building and conflict resolution capability.
• Sound problem resolution, judgment, and decision-making.
• Ability to think critically.
• Ability to manage/work well with the team and efficiently distribute expertise.
• Ability to provide 24 hour/7 days a week on-call support.
• Willingness to take ownership of issues and ability to create and sustain a sense of urgency and accountability.
• Ability to work and collaborate directly with internal customers, other agencies and third parties.
• Experience with following one of the following technology platforms (AppDynamics, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics).

Education and Certifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration or other related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Scrum, Agile, and ITIL certifications are preferred, but not required.