IT Infrastructure Manager

The Role : Responsible for delivering IT infrastructure products and services in support of MetLife Brazil. This position contributes to and executes the infrastructure strategy and delivers leadership regarding standardizing, integrating, and improving the infrastructure technologies that support the company and must be supportive to critical applications and regulatory requirements. This role leads a multi-disciplinary team representing infrastructure disciplines including Data Center, Engineering, Telecommunications, Midrange, Distributed Systems, Information Security, End User Technologies, Service Management, Help Desk and Service Quality supporting businesses locally.

Dimensions of Position:

1. Responsible for leading Country IT infrastructure strategies and delivery.

2. Responsible for identifying and implementing shared IT infrastructure services.

3. Leads optimization efforts to ensure that technology IT infrastructure performs at high level of performance to meet business requirements.

4. Change agent to promote Cloud adoption, Agile-Dev-Sec-Ops ways of working and Digital Transformation.

Leadership and Strategic Direction:

Creates the long-term strategic plan including alignment and integration with the application development and business plans. Drives the adoption of plan.

Develops infrastructure primary goals, operating plans, policies, near term and strategic objectives for Infrastructure subjects.

Leads transformational change within Infrastructure technologies that reshape the business and contributes to significant growth.

Works with local CIO in influence the business from a technology perspective to help the business unit create new streams of value, thus enhancing the competitiveness of MetLife.

Works with CIO in a consultative fashion with other department heads, as an advisor of technologies that may improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

Operational Efficiency and Cost Containment

1. Supports the 7x24 Infrastructure Technologies production environments. Operations include Data Centers, Production Support (Command Center and Batch Operations), Service Desk, and 1st and 2nd level support for Distributed Systems, Telecom, Information Security, SOs, Mid-range systemsand Database technologies.

2. Ensures continued business responsiveness, risk mitigation, and operational stability of technologies and services supporting the lines of business.

3. Leads initiatives to integrate services, driving cost reduction with adherence to IT Infrastructure common practices, governance and architecture standards

Relationship Management as it relates to Business Aligned Functions

1. Maintains a service orientated, customer focused IT function that supports ongoing operations that drive efficiency, quality, customer service and growth.

2. Supports the negotiation and provision of high-quality service levels for each business unit

3. Strengthens relationships with local CIO and peers.

4. Works together with local CIO with strong understanding of client requirements, being able to translate business strategy into actionable plans and articulate business needs from a customer-centric point of view.

Key Relationships:

• Reports to: VP & Regional CTO IT Infrastructure, Global Infrastructure Services and in dotted line to CIO in Brazil

• Reports/team : 20 direct / indirect reports in country

Key Responsibilities:

• Work together with local CIO
• Manage all operational aspects of IT Infrastructure services, both with the global data center vendor and in-country.
• Provide local support the 7x24 Infrastructure Technologies production environments. Operations include Production Support, Service Desk, and 1st and 2nd level support for Distributed Systems, Telecom, Information Security, Mid-range systems, SOs and Database technologies (DB2, Oracle, SQL)
• Generate and implement strategies with the corresponding road map for the modernization and maintenance of the technological services in good health, which avoid risks in the core services that the company offers.
• Manage the relationship with the GDC and country vendors, maintaining regular contact and act as the primary interface for all escalations with the vendor staff at various levels (engineering, operations management, account and executive levels)
• Partner with global IT Service Management team to implement and own standard ITSM processes for IT Infrastructure Operations in LATAM, covering both outsourced and in-country operations, including Service Request, Change Management, Release Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Performance and Capacity Management, Asset management, End user support and Help desk.
• Directly oversee regular governance activities for both outsourced and in-country operations and ensure appropriate documentation is produced relating to all Data Center activities.
• Be an effective technical expert to communicate and manage the GDC infrastructure and operations architecture to teams as needed.
• Lead the infrastructure design and planning for enterprise class, large, complex, cross domain technology projects locally.
• Create or tailor infrastructure reference architectures, design documentation, hardware/software bill of materials (BoMs), project plans and other design or project artefacts.
• Perform infrastructure estimation and capacity planning to ensure data center / locally shared services are sized correctly.
• Act in a technical advisory role to Project and Program Managers to ensure that technically optimal decisions are made during project planning and execution.
• Propose budget efficiency actions for optimize the use of the financial resources.
• Participate in the in-country vendor contract evaluation ensuring the best trade that provide a balance between cost and efficiency.
• Work in conjunction with the IT Risk and Security teams to mitigate, solve technical vulnerabilities and to promote the adherence to all the established security policies.
• Maintains a service orientated, customer focused IT function that supports ongoing operations that drive efficiency, quality, customer service and growth.
• Creates the long-term strategic plan including alignment and integration with the application development and business plans. Drives the adoption of plan.
• Develops Infrastructure primary goals, operating plans, policies, near term and strategic objectives for the country.
• Leads infrastructure transformational change within Infrastructure technologies that reshape the business and contributes to significant growth.

Essential Business Experience and Technical Skills:

• Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration or related, or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years data centre and IT technical/engineering experience
• 7+ years management of DC environments
• Experience in implementation and management of ITSM processes and demonstrated use of ITIL process in an IT operation environment.
• Experience in management of significant (multi-country or global) Data Centre Services vendor relationships

Skills Preferred:

• English 100%
• Spanish (desirable)
• Knowledge of the various legal/operational IT infrastructure challenges across country.
• Acting as vendor management being the liaison of the operative conditions and the performance evaluation of the contracted services
• Excellent communications skills (oral & written) and ability to coordinate with various teams for request/task completion, facilitation, and analytical skills, inclusive of written, verbal and listening technical account management or consulting experience.
• Excellent infrastructure architecture and engineering documentation skills
• Excellent project management skills