Blackboard Hiring for Dir, Systems Operations at Chennai, Tamil Nadu Full Time

Director, Learn Operations

Chennai, India

The Opportunity:
We’re looking for a Director, Learn Operations to help us push the boundaries of what education can offer through the power of technology. Education is our passion, and our team members bring that to work each day as they aim to advance learning in every region of the world. Blackboard is the world’s leading education technology company, providing dynamic products and services to the global education community. We’re focused on driving innovation in EdTech and working with our clients to create a smarter learning environment.

At Blackboard, we believe in the power of a truly diverse and inclusive workforce. As we expand globally, we are committed to making diversity, inclusion, and belonging a foundational part of not only our hiring practices, but who we are as a company.

For more information about Blackboard Inc. and our career opportunities, please visit www.blackboard.com.

As the Director of the Learn Operations organization at Blackboard, you will be responsible for managing a team of systems engineers and systems administrators responsible for Tier 1 and Tier 2 support of our flagship Learn application in both our managed hosting and cloud SaaS offerings. The Director, Learn Operations will play an integral role in the success of the group.

Primary responsibilities will include:
Working with Product Development teams to establish joint operational priorities

Overseeing 24×7 emergency on-call rotation

Deploying and maintaining high-availability Linux systems with a continuing focus on standardization of administration and configuration

Developing automation tools for maintenance, troubleshooting, and administration

Configuring and managing performance monitoring tools and notification services

Undertaking various housekeeping and reporting functions for the areas of responsibility, including product deployments, upgrades & maintenance

Developing and implementing a plan of continual improvement

Driving the team’s efforts for improving our automated tests and reducing time to market for our SaaS offering

Using data to measure and improve overall team productivity and product quality

Providing timely and transparent written status reports that highlight both successes and challenges

Collaborating with other members of the Learn product development staff to develop a true sense of shared responsibility & energy for the entire product, from conception through deployment

Recruiting, mentoring, organizing, motivating, and coaching a team of 24×7 engineering and operations professionals; assigning projects and arranging training to advance the career of everyone within the team; defining and monitoring goals

Identifying and coaching future leaders to take on additional personnel and technical responsibility

Bringing a deep understanding of Quality Assurance in a team, and a proven track record of shipping software on time with countable quality

Being a very strong leader, mentor, recruiter, and people manager

Nurturing a collaborative environment across multiple geos and functional teams

Providing leadership and guidance in all aspects of deployments, monitoring, reports, and tools

Proactively identifying opportunities to eliminate manual efforts via the development/adoption of the appropriate tools/scripts

Working closely with both internal and external teams and vendors to guarantee continuous uptime, delivery on Service Level Agreements and maintaining site performance and operations

Working as an integral player in a team that depends on everyone working together in a short delivery cycle

Leading a world-class team of engineers and administrators responsible for supporting and maintaining a highly available application in use by hundreds of institutions and millions of users worldwide

Accelerating the push to move all infrastructure from self-managed data centers to AWS

Tracking operating costs for all non-production and production systems and reacting when costs are abnormal

Managing and maintaining a cohesive view between both product offerings, handling operations metrics, version management, and driving process improvements

Standardizing monitoring and reporting across several data centers in both private- and public-clouds

Working to ensure that native and cloud-based product infrastructure is scaled to meet future product and service needs

The Candidate:
Required skills/qualifications:
Experience managing SysOps or DevOps teams

Expertise and working knowledge of network/server infrastructure running in virtualized and cloud environments

Experience working in and leading a 24x7x365 Operations environment

Experience working within distributed systems and managing multiple function teams

Experienced in managing teams in an agile environment

Track record of hiring great engineers and building strong teams

Track record of identifying productivity opportunities and taking the appropriate remedial action

Track record of influencing a US-based management team

Always looking to uncover the root cause of any issue

Experience with and solid understanding of web and app servers, Apache Tomcat and Nginx. Scripting in Chef, Perl, Python, etc.

Experience with JIRA bug tracking system

Strong communication skills with an ability to listen and be heard

Self-starter, collaborative team player

Experience with Linux in a production environment

Experience troubleshooting and resolving application and/or system-related issues

Strong written and spoken English

Ability to track, measure, and maintain uptime, incident response, and issue resolution times in accordance with service level agreements 24x7x365

Ability to own incident management and problem management processes for the team to drive continuous improvement for end user experience and SLA guarantees

Strong understanding how to configure and deploy Linux servers programmatically in cloud infrastructures

Ability to work independently and within a geographically distributed team

Minimum of a bachelor’s degree; with over 10 years’ work-related experience in a relevant technical discipline

Ability to effectively communicate with peers and management

Ability to manage multiple, concurrent projects and tasks with overlapping deliverable dates

Preferred skills/qualifications:
Experience with large-scale software development processes and multi-region deployments

Experience installing, monitoring, and maintaining Linux servers in the cloud, especially in AWS

Ability to find and resolve outages, scalability, performance, and reliability problems, even if you must dig into assembly code

Experience working with Open Source Tools & Software

Previous experience in the education industry and with e-learning technologies

Background in content/knowledge management, digital asset management, as well as with education related technologies

To ensure the safety and wellbeing of our employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, Blackboard positions are currently remote (where possible).

The Office:
Blackboard has an office in one of the biggest cultural, economic, and educational centers in South India: Chennai.

Located on OMR, the IT corridor of South Chennai

Easy access to Velachery, Thiruvanmiyur Railway station and bus stop

Very close to Tidel Park, Ascendas, and SRP Tools – Holiday Inn

Office provides lunch Tuesday – Thursday and evening snacks Monday – Friday

Office is situated behind Hotel Turyaa on the 5th floor of Rayala Techno Park

Fun Committee, Happy Fete Team, Food Committee, and Sports Committee ensures fun at work

ISR Team actively engages employees in contributing to various local charities

This job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required. Nothing in this job description restricts management’s right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities at any time.

Blackboard is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, protected military/veteran status, or any other legally protected factor.

Req ID: 549