Service Delivery Senior Director – z/OS Central Service
Position Summary
We are seeking an accomplished Service Delivery Senior Director to provide executive operational leadership for the end-to-end delivery of a large-scale IBM z/OS Central Service within a managed-services environment.
This leader will have overall accountability for service stability, operational performance, contractual commitments, service levels, client governance, major incidents, change management, capacity management, compliance, risk management, and continuous service improvement.
The successful candidate will bring a strong combination of managed-services leadership and IBM z/OS mainframe operational experience, with the ability to lead complex technical service organizations while maintaining a strong executive relationship with the client.
This position requires an experienced service-delivery executive who understands how to translate technical and operational performance into measurable business outcomes. The individual will serve as a senior point of accountability for the service, ensuring that operational teams consistently deliver against contractual obligations while proactively addressing service risks, capacity requirements, performance challenges, and opportunities for improvement.
Key Responsibilities
Service Delivery & Operational Leadership
- Provide executive leadership and end-to-end accountability for delivery of the z/OS Central Service.
- Own overall service health, stability, availability, performance, operational readiness, and delivery quality.
- Establish and maintain a strong operational governance framework across all teams responsible for delivering the service.
- Ensure consistent execution of service-management processes across a complex managed-services environment.
- Coordinate multidisciplinary technical and operational teams to ensure services are delivered reliably and in accordance with client expectations and contractual requirements.
- Provide direction and leadership during periods of operational instability, major incidents, significant changes, capacity constraints, or elevated service risk.
- Maintain clear accountability across technical teams and service-management functions and ensure delivery issues have appropriate owners, remediation actions, and escalation paths.
z/OS Service Management
- Provide senior operational oversight of enterprise IBM z/OS mainframe services and the technical organizations supporting them.
- Partner closely with mainframe infrastructure, systems programming, operations, capacity, storage, network, security, database, middleware, and other technical teams involved in overall service delivery.
- Ensure z/OS operational performance, capacity, availability, incidents, problems, changes, and service risks are appropriately monitored and managed.
- Translate complex mainframe operational issues into clear business and service implications for senior client and internal stakeholders.
- Ensure technical teams maintain appropriate operational discipline and follow established service-management processes.
SLA & Contractual Performance
- Own delivery against complex Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and contractual service commitments.
- Monitor service performance against agreed contractual measures and identify emerging trends or areas of potential non-performance.
- Lead development and execution of remediation plans when performance falls below contractual or operational expectations.
- Ensure service-management teams maintain appropriate visibility into service-level performance, risks, dependencies, and corrective actions.
- Work across technical, commercial, account, and delivery organizations to maintain alignment between contractual obligations and operational execution.
- Provide senior leadership with clear visibility into service performance and areas requiring intervention.
Client Governance & Executive Engagement
- Serve as a senior operational interface with client executives, technology leaders, and service-management stakeholders.
- Lead or participate in executive service reviews and governance forums.
- Present service performance, SLA results, operational trends, major incidents, capacity considerations, risks, remediation activities, and continuous-improvement initiatives.
- Establish credibility and trusted relationships with client stakeholders through transparency, accountability, and disciplined service management.
- Communicate complex technical issues in an executive-level manner focused on business impact, risk, resolution, and actions.
- Manage escalations effectively while maintaining constructive client relationships.
Incident, Problem & Change Management
- Provide executive oversight for major incident management and ensure appropriate leadership is engaged during critical service-impacting events.
- Ensure major incidents receive appropriate technical response, stakeholder communication, escalation, and follow-through.
- Drive disciplined root-cause analysis and corrective/preventive actions following significant incidents.
- Monitor recurring problems and operational trends to reduce repeat incidents and improve overall service stability.
- Oversee change-management practices to balance business requirements with operational stability and service risk.
- Ensure significant changes have appropriate planning, technical validation, risk assessment, stakeholder communication, and governance.
Capacity, Performance & Availability
- Ensure appropriate governance around z/OS capacity, performance, availability, and service demand.
- Partner with technical teams to identify capacity constraints and performance risks before they negatively affect client services.
- Maintain executive visibility into significant capacity requirements, operational dependencies, and areas that could present future service risk.
- Ensure capacity and performance considerations are incorporated into service reviews, planning, change initiatives, and client governance.
Continuous Service Improvement
- Establish a culture of continuous improvement across the service-delivery organization.
- Develop and oversee service-improvement and remediation plans addressing operational performance, reliability, efficiency, quality, and client experience.
- Use service performance metrics, incident trends, problem data, and operational findings to identify improvement priorities.
- Drive standardization, automation, operational maturity, and process discipline where appropriate.
- Track improvement initiatives through measurable outcomes and regularly communicate progress to internal and client stakeholders.
Risk, Compliance & Operational Controls
- Ensure delivery operations adhere to applicable contractual requirements, security standards, compliance obligations, and operational-control frameworks.
- Maintain appropriate visibility into operational risks and ensure mitigation plans are established and executed.
- Coordinate with security, compliance, audit, risk, and technical stakeholders as required.
- Ensure appropriate documentation, controls, procedures, and governance mechanisms are maintained across the service.
- Support audits, client reviews, and other service-assurance activities related to operational delivery.
Organizational Leadership
- Lead and influence multidisciplinary teams across a complex, matrixed service-delivery organization.
- Establish clear priorities, expectations, ownership, and accountability across delivery functions.
- Partner effectively with account leadership, technical executives, engineering teams, service-management teams, commercial stakeholders, and client leadership.
- Create alignment among teams with different technical specialties and organizational responsibilities.
- Mentor and develop service-delivery leaders while promoting a culture of operational excellence, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in IT service management, service delivery, outsourcing, or managed-services environments.
- 5+ years of direct service-management, delivery-management, or operational leadership experience supporting IBM z/OS mainframe environments.
- Demonstrated experience managing large, complex, business-critical IT services within an enterprise or managed-services environment.
- Proven experience managing complex SLAs, contractual service commitments, service-performance requirements, and remediation plans.
- Demonstrated leadership across incident management, problem management, change management, capacity management, service operations, and multidisciplinary technical teams.
- Significant experience supporting enterprise-class IBM mainframe environments and working with teams responsible for z/OS infrastructure and operations.
- Strong experience leading senior-level client governance and presenting service performance, service risks, capacity considerations, major incidents, improvement plans, and contractual outcomes.
- Demonstrated ability to manage major service incidents and executive escalations in high-visibility, business-critical environments.
- Strong understanding of ITIL service-management principles and processes.
- Demonstrated ability to operate successfully within highly matrixed global organizations.
- Excellent executive communication, presentation, stakeholder-management, and relationship-management skills.
- Ability to translate complex technical and operational topics into clear business impact, risk, decisions, and actions for executive audiences.
Preferred Qualifications
- ITIL certification.
- Experience leading large-scale enterprise mainframe managed-services or infrastructure outsourcing engagements.
- Experience working in highly regulated, security-sensitive, or business-critical technology environments.
- Experience managing service-delivery organizations consisting of multiple infrastructure and technology disciplines.
- Demonstrated success improving service stability, operational performance, service-management maturity, and client satisfaction.
- Experience leading transformation, automation, modernization, or continuous-improvement programs within managed infrastructure services.
- Experience working across globally distributed delivery organizations.
They should bring a minimum of five years of direct IBM z/OS service-management or operational leadership experience, combined with at least ten years of managed-services, outsourcing, or enterprise service-delivery management experience.
Most importantly, this individual should combine three capabilities that are not always found together: credible z/OS operational knowledge, executive-level client leadership, and rigorous managed-services/service-delivery discipline.
What Success Looks Like
Success in this position will be demonstrated through:
- Stable, predictable, and reliable delivery of the z/OS Central Service.
- Consistent achievement of contractual commitments and service levels.
- Effective management and timely resolution of major incidents and escalations.
- Proactive identification and mitigation of service, capacity, performance, and operational risks.
- Strong executive-level client governance and stakeholder confidence.
- Effective remediation of service-performance issues.
- Measurable improvements in service quality, operational maturity, resilience, and efficiency.
- Strong collaboration across technical, service-management, account, commercial, and client organizations.
