Director, Systems Engineering (Compute Operations /Linux)

About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

As Director of Compute Operations, your primary responsibility will be to lead a diverse global team responsible for the management and support of Visa’s global Compute infrastructure and implement/drive improvements based on the ITIL framework.

This will involve managing a local team of engineers in the Singapore region and working with the leadership team of Compute Operations across various geographical locations such as US, UK and Asia Pacific.You will also work closely with the leadership teams from Compute Tools, Compute Engineering, Compute Architecture, and other cross-functional teams who manage systems and applications that help to drive efficiency and improvements in supporting/managing the Compute Infrastructure, review/enhance processes and implement new technologies.

This position is within IRE (Infrastructure Reliability Engineering) – Compute Services team that architects, engineers and operates Visa’s global Compute Infrastructure. The candidate will be responsible for managing the day-to-day functions of the 24x7x365 Operations team and will be required to ensure proper change management and incident escalations processes are defined, followed, etc. This includes ensuring the team maintains audit compliance and delivers on corporate/departmental goals and metrics. This role is expected to participate in devising the technology strategy and operating standards for Visa’s Compute infrastructure.

This position is expected to interact with Systems, Database, Engineering, Asset Management, Product Development, Operations, Audit and Risk, and various groups within Technology. This role must have strong communication and analytical skills. The IRE team is centered on hiring and developing diverse talents who are passionate about building and operating state-of-the-art infrastructure through technology and innovation.

Job Scope / Responsibilities

• Manage service availability, reliability & supportability initiatives to improve performance & uptime.

• Managing a heterogeneous infrastructure environment comprising of different flavours of hardware (HP, Dell & IBM) and Software (Linux, AIX, CentOS and Windows OS).

• Manage enterprise virtualization technologies including VMware, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift & Hyper-V.

• Experience & exposure to cloud-based technologies like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform.

• Strong knowledge & experience in system monitoring tools & techniques supporting unattended operations.

• Capable of prioritizing and managing high volume workloads from multiple sources, working to strict SLA’s

• Drive bottoms-up improvements for compute operations (including Level-1 & Level-2 Incident management, Change management and Problem management)

• Customer/partner engagements to represent operational concerns/needs.

• Mentor technical staff and drive programs to improve overall effectiveness and efficiency

• Establish best-practice methodologies for problem resolution in a global, 24 x 7, high volume, high availability, critical production environment, based on metrics-based KPIs.

• Lead the innovation/development of Compute operations processes and tools from concept to delivery with a focus on new technologies, particularly virtualization, SDN and big data analytics.

• Provide leadership to manage demands from projects and technology upgrades including recommendations for vendor tools/solutions and global alignment of Compute operations.

• Mentor, manage and motivate a high-performing team of senior professionals and set clear priorities to achieve department goals and KPIs.

• Strong technical, analytical and troubleshooting skills and an ability to explain technical concepts and provide guidance to staff.

• Support adoption of new technologies and tools recommend capability improvements to compute engineering and assist in lab POC

• Drive coordination, consensus, and execution to mitigate cyber security risks and emerging threats in a dynamic environment.

• Govern security remediation process (vulnerability assessment and patch management) for compute infrastructure

• Good understanding & knowledge of OS hardening and systems security.

• Assist in the development of a strategic roadmap to ensure service level targets & compute operations goals are met.

• Work closely with various compute functions (tools, engineering, and architecture), and other cross-functional teams to drive efficiency and improvement.

• Ensure compute operations are conducted according to governing standards, and in compliance with various audit and regulatory requirements.

• Participate in disaster recovery/business continuity activities, as needed.

• Establish standards and governance in future acquisitions to mitigate risk and maximize stability.

• Provide subject matter expertise in interactions with partners & customers and program managed collaboration projects both internal & external.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

10 years of work experience with a bachelor’s degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications:

12-15 years of work experience with a bachelor’s degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD

As the ideal candidate, you should be a proven leader of technical teams in a diverse, fast paced environment. ​The following qualifications are required for the role: ​

• Bachelors or master’s degree in engineering, computer science, or related field.

• 10+ years’ experience in technology, information security, and/or compute administration; with 6+ years of experience in management role

• Experience managing a heterogeneous infrastructure environment comprising of different flavours of hardware (HP, Dell & IBM) and Software (Linux, AIX, CentOS ).

• With current or held advanced compute technical certification (e.g., VCP, RHCSA/AWS/CKA/GCP, or relevant industry certification etc.).

• Exposure to storage clustering software like Spectrum Scale, ScaleIO will be value added.

• Experience or background with automation using Ansible and/or Python would be desired.

• Experience & exposure to cloud-based technologies like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform preferred.

• Experience leading a large Software/Tools Development team or compute engineering / operations team.

• Prior experience in multi-vendor networking/shared-infra technologies.

• Experience leading a compute operations team that manages enterprise level infrastructure.

• Hands-on experience in deploying large scale compute technologies.

• Proven track record of driving change and transformation in compute operations processes, tools and technologies through metrics driven, KPI based methodologies, and an evidence based operational improvement and decision-making approach to best meet business objectives and priorities.

• Prior experience in driving and leading enterprise technology and cultural transformation programs.

• Demonstrated understanding of tools and technologies in compute operations ecosystem.

• Demonstrated consistent and steady growth in career.

• Great communicator and able to drive consensus across diverse/global technology teams.

• Track record in developing next generation leaders.

• Demonstrated experience of metrics driven management with accountability.

• Good analytical skills (able to develop and produce meaningful reports from multiple streams of data)

Visa is an EEO Employer

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.