Manager, Platform Engineering - (2500007P)

Manager, Platform Engineering - (2500007P)

Job Summary

Towson University (TU) is one of the nation’s top 100 public universities. Located north of Baltimore, TU currently enrolls over 19,000 students and is the second-largest university in the prestigious University System of Maryland.Towson University fosters a climate that is grounded in respect to cultivate the intellectual and personal growth of the entire university community.

The Platform Engineering team is responsible for managing a reliable server and storage environment and other back-end services to support the services used by the university community. This includes the overall server and storage platform for university services (including physical servers/storage in on-campus datacenters and infrastructure-as-a-service cloud-hosted environments like Microsoft Azure), virtualization/hypervisors (like VMware or Hyper-V), server hosting for campus stakeholders (which may include chargeback), aspects of server patching and management, capacity planning of server/storage resources, automation of server and storage infrastructure, design/configuration/maintenance of server/storage hardware, backups (including immutable backups), certain aspects of disaster recovery, systems monitoring, security monitoring, vulnerability management, automation systems and aspects of source code control systems.

In addition to managing those services and operations, the Platform Engineering Manager is also responsible for working with other Enterprise and Infrastructure (EIS) management, other teams in OTS, and business and end users to ensure that the service offerings meet the needs of the university.This team is focused on delivering reliable, secure and scalable services to the university.The position helps to provide leadership and guidance on the services in the Platform Engineering group.

The position performs all the typical supervisory responsibilities for the team members. The position also manages projects and other coordinated efforts, works with vendors, is responsible for maintaining contracts/budget items (like software licensing), and contacts peers at other organizations to learn about industry trends and best practices. This position must continue to build knowledge, and ensure the team is building and sharing its knowledge. Telework may be available for this position up to two days per week following the completion of 90 days of service in good standing.

Responsibilities and Duties

a. Management and Operations Oversight

• Directs day-to-day operations and issue resolution for operations and personnel within the Platform Engineering team.
• Develops strategies for improving the technical, interpersonal and communication skills of the team. Motivates employees and defines goals/objectives for the group.
• Ensures that support requests are handled in a timely and appropriate manner. Assist in support request metrics/trending. Ensure proper documentation of support requests.
• Looks for ways to streamline and maximize the effectiveness of the group.
• Time-tracking and timesheet approval. Handles all hiring, firing, and disciplinary actions. Provides regular feedback and performance evaluations for the group.
• Ensures agreed-upon operations (e.g., auditing, documentation) are performed. Ensures procedures are accurate, clear and well-documented.
• Ensure appropriate cross-training is provided within the group and with others in OTS.
• Performs operational tasks as required. Performs technical work in a lead role as required.
• Manage contracts/budget items, submit purchase requests, and perform capacity planning as required, including working with others in EIS to ensure proper budget planning and identifying ways to lower costs.

b. Leadership and Guidance for Service Offerings

• Ensure proper management of the many service offerings for which the Platform Engineering team is responsible, including reliability, capacity and security.
• Work with multiple OTS teams and business/end users to ensure that the service offerings meet the needs of the university in a reliable, user-friendly, and secure manner.
• Ensure appropriate, secure, sustainable, audit-ready design of services.
• Lead virtual team/product groups as directed, which will include participants across EIS and possibly OTS; these groups will improve the quality of support, the level of understanding, and overall product direction.
• Provide technical guidance, assistance and oversight as needed in the design and implementation of services.
• Ensure adherence to state, USM and university security guidelines and policies.
• Ensure operations/procedures are well-defined and well-documented.
• Continue to build knowledge on industry trends and best practices.
• Follow architecture best practices whenever implementing and improving service offerings.
• Develop capacity planning processes to ensure services are sized accordingly, future growth/needs are understood, and future budgets can properly reflect necessary growth.
• Provide suggestions on improvements, ways to reduce risks and costs, and forecasting of needs to the Director of Enterprise and Infrastructure Services.

c. Project Management and Coordination

• Management or oversight of projects and initiatives as directed, following all OTS project management processes.
• Prioritizes tasks according to their relative positive impact and/or risk to the university.
• Clearly directs what is expected from the group and holds regular meetings to ensure that the group is meeting its goals.
• Participates in project implementation planning within OTS and supports approved projects within our campus community.
• Lead research efforts, virtual teams and workgroups as assigned.

d. Communications

• Meets regularly with the Director of Enterprise and Infrastructure Services to discuss issues, problems, strategies, and solutions.
• Works directly with other managers in OTS to assist in planning and to understand and support their needs.
• Communicates on a regular basis with peers, vendors and those in similar roles at other universities.
• Works with clients/business users as appropriate to identify requirements, to communicate issues and changes, and to resolve issues.
• Communicates any service outages immediately using approved methods and procedures.

Qualifications and Skills

• Bachelor’s degree and three years of experience.
• Strong demonstrated experience in designing, implementing, supporting and maintaining enterprise-level services.
• Demonstrated experience in managing Windows Server environments.
• Experience or familiarity in managing Linux server environments.
• Experience with complex systems architectures.
• Experience with Microsoft infrastructure solutions, including Active Directory.
• Experience managing small and mid-sized projects.
• Experience or familiarity in building automation to support services and improve efficiency.
• Experience with physical server and storage management.
• Experience with managing virtualization (such as VMware or Hyper-V).
• Experience with large-scale cloud offerings (such as Microsoft Azure).
• Demonstrated ability to successfully interact with multiple stakeholders with divergent interests to obtain a set of common goals and objectives.
• Demonstrated ability to handle multiple projects and operations to ensure they are delivered on-time, in-budget, in-scope, and meet requirements.
• Ability to perform cost-benefit analyses of alternatives and assess risk.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated ability to lead a team of technical staff.
• Experience in higher education environments.
• Experience with server management and monitoring software (such as SCCM, Ansible, SCOM, Azure Monitor).
• Experience with datacenter management.
• Experience with backups, immutable backups, and disaster recovery.
• Experience with scripting and/or programming/development.
• Experience or strong familiarity with information security concepts, security hardening, and security auditing.
• Experience with network and voice infrastructure, particularly Cisco solutions.
• Experience in technical leadership and/or project management.
• Technical certifications in any relevant disciplines.

Salary and Benefits

Salary of $133,000-$138,000 annually and full University benefits that include 22 days of annual leave, up to 15 holidays, personal and sick days; excellent health, life, and retirement plans; and tuition remission. To learn more about our benefits, click here. TU also offers a variety of great perks and discounts, which can be found here.

To apply: https://towson.taleo.net/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?job=2500007P

This position will be open for a minimum of 14 days. For consideration, please submit a cover letter and resume with your online application.

The safety of our students, faculty, staff, and neighbors has been our top priority and the focus of every one of our decisions since the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the University System of Maryland (USM) has strongly encouraged full COVID vaccination and up-to-date booster shots (when eligible) for all faculty, staff, and students at all schools in the USM as both a reasonable and necessary means of protecting our health and safety.