ROLE SUMMARY
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a set of principles and practices that seeks to take a software engineering approach to solving IT Operations problems. In the Command Center & Ops team, we seek to apply an SRE approach to managing infrastructure operations, with a focus on:
• Ensuring services are running smoothly: identifying and regularly reviewing operational health indicators to ensure delivery to defined service levels.
• Continuously analysing service data to identify service improvement opportunities. Opportunities will be assessed on their potential to remove manual effort (‘toil’), improve service reliability and enhance customer experience.
• Developing, or partnering with other teams to develop automation that will remove toil from the environment, and deliver a more reliable, cost effective service to the company.
The SRE Pod Lead for Converged/Hyperconverged Infrastructure*, Wintel Server and Citrix will take the lead in ensuring that Pfizer’s critical services for that service area deliver reliability and uptime appropriate to clients’ needs.
*In this context, Converged/Hyperconverged infrastructure refers to the infrastructure technology that combines compute, storage and network resources into a single optimized platform to host applications.
ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES
• Act as focal point for a small team of Pfizer colleague and supplier resources* operating in a matrixed fashion for Converged Infrastructure, Wintel server and Citrix operations. Work to embed the core principles and practices on Site Reliability Engineering in the operation of those services.
• Ensure the service is meeting the quality and reliability outcomes expected by its customers: identify and regularly review operational health indicators for the service area in question, ensuring delivery to defined OKRs.
• Continuously analyse service data to identify service improvement opportunities. Opportunities will be assessed on their potential to remove manual effort (‘toil’), improve service reliability and enhance customer experience.
• Maintain a backlog of user stories for prioritized opportunities. Manage pursuit of items in the backlog in an agile fashion, favouring rapid iteration and continuous delivery of work products.
• As it will be a key mechanism for removing toil, the SRE Pod Lead will lead automation efforts for the service in question. This will entail ensuring the appropriate skills are available to develop automation, that it is developed to agreed standards, aligned with other service areas and the EP&S automation lead, and released in a compliant manner.
• Maintain a keen focus on process efficiency, utilizing practices like value stream mapping to continuously analyse operational processes and workflows for opportunities to re-engineer to remove waste.
• Constantly evaluate cost of service delivery for service in question. As toil is removed, develop and implement recommendations for cost improvement through improved staffing models.
• Assume a leadership role on major outages or planned events that impact the Converged Infrastructure, Wintel server and Citrix service, or for which a service component in this scope may be a contributory factor. Collaborate closely with Command Center to ensure processes are optimised for management of critical incidents for the service including escalation matrices, troubleshooting plans and impact statements.
• Develop and maintain monitoring artefacts that allow for proactive and pre-emptive monitoring of services, with an objective of avoiding service disruptions. Partner closely with Command Center to integrate the artefacts and associated processes into their day-to-day operations.
• Lead postmortems for major events pertaining to the service. Ensure that learnings from service failures are identified and that action plans are develop and executed upon.
• Conduct reliability testing on services in scope, ensuring services are fit for purpose and identifying areas for improvement.
• Provide complex request and escalation coordination for service, collaborating with other SRE Pods and service areas as required to ensure seamless end-to-end delivery.
*This role will not have direct reports but will be expected to lead a group of SRE resources, both Pfizer and third party in a matrixed fashion.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 5 years of demonstrated experience in similar roles/environments.
• Embraces accountabilities and leads with intent in those areas. Exhibits an ownership demeanor, be it in leading the response to a major service interruption or facilitating process improvement. Includes the ability to effectively lead others more senior than them, and not directly on the same team.
• Familiarity with (or proven ability to rapidly learn) enterprise infrastructure concepts and technologies.
• Strong data literacy and analytical ability. Must be able to aggregate data from different sources, derive insights and communicate actionable information.
• Proven ability to build and improve processes and workflows. Willingness to not follow the orthodoxy on how processes should be executed, and a record of simplifying and streamlining. Relentless focus on removing toil (manual effort) through process re-design and automation.
• Exposure to agile ways of working or demonstrated aptitudes that mean they would be effective in such a paradigm. These include a bias toward action and the discipline to do the day-to-day with excellence (examples: facilitate stand-ups, review health indicators, groom backlog).
• Poise in high-pressure situations, must have a track record of dealing with situations like major outages effectively.
• Able to communicate in a succinct, accurate and timely fashion. Ability to effectively communicate technical issues/challenges to business recipients.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate continuous improvement initiatives in partnership with stakeholders outside of their immediate team.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
• Understanding of software development concepts and standards a distinct advantage, or a proven ability to rapidly learn such concepts.
NON-STANDARD WORK SCHEDULE, TRAVEL OR ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS
Command Center & Ops is a 24x7 operations team, with team members spread across multiple geographies. Some flexibility in work hours may be required on occasion in order to connect with these colleagues.
Last Date to Apply for Job: 5/13/2021
Eligible for Employee Referral Bonus
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Job Type: Full time