Application Services Director

Basic Function

The Application Services Leader is a new role within the Digital Technology (DT) organization and is responsible for the newly formed Application Services organization at LYB.  The organization has global responsibilities across all operating regions at LYB.   This leadership position manages a budget of over $45MM with a $6MM a year application management offshore team.  The group will consist of 15-20 full-time employees that will be highly effective technical resources providing strategic direction, architecture, design, delivery, development, and application support across LYB.  Leveraging a deep understanding of application operations to deliver stable and cost-effective environment in support of mission critical business systems that align with enterprise growth strategies.  The group will provide overall application operational support for applications at LYB, primarily non-ERP applications that support various areas of the business.  The role is critical to the sustained success of LYB Digital Technologies, providing a reliable foundation to support the business.

This is a senior level leadership role that will have managers reporting to them to drive the day-to-day tactical work of managing the global infrastructure.  The team is comprised of technical resources and offshore services. This role can be based in Houston, TX, Mumbai, India, or Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Roles & Responsibilities

The leader is responsible for:

• Deep understanding of application operations at LYB, accountable for application roadmaps to ensure compliance and continuous application lifecycle management.
• Leverage artificial intelligence tools to determine proactive measures to reduce outages and service impacting events.
• Assist in the integration of key SaaS based systems in the LYB landscape, ensuring applications follow strict guidelines for application security at LYB.
• Create and maintain application security standards, working closely with information protection and compliance to ensure both security and operational effectiveness of standards.
• Working closely with Business Interface groups and solutions architects to onboard new applications into the support organization.
• Requires high levels of partnership and influence with business interface and architecture teams.
• Collaborate with application, service and problem teams recommending changes for performance improvements as a result of data from dashboards and monitoring tools.
• Ensure high availability of IT systems, ensuring careful planning and adherents to change control procedures.
• Manage Level 1 Application Management Support agreement across all areas of LYB.
• Work closely with direct managers to understand daily application operations to ensure high performance and availability.
• Provide leadership for delivery of 24/7 application operations.  Establish metrics, key performance indicators, and service level agreements to continually improve the performance of IT operations.
• Manage capacity requirements to ensure budgeting supports overall financial goals.
• Manage key vendor relationships and negotiate licensing and support agreements.
• Develop IT policies and procedures in keeping with business needs and control requirements.
• Communicate all IT issues and keep management informed on progress.
• Develop and implement application services innovation in keeping with industry trends and business needs.
• Responsible for operational budget, as well as project budget allocated to area.
• Working with DT leadership to understand needs and prioritize demands.
• Interface with Internal Audit for General IT Controls
• Providing leadership and management to establish best practices for delivery of high quality, standard, scalable solutions.
• Ensures that application reliability is maintained for all systems
• Drives strategic direction of all application services
• Drives improvements in IT to drive efficiencies while increasing throughput.
• Ensures that the IT enhancements and project demands committed to are completed successfully and deliver the anticipated results.
• Drives standardization and proactively recommends improvements
• Cultivate high morale, teamwork and effective empowerment as main goals for achieving productivity.
• Lead and foster an inclusive workplace and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at all levels throughout DTS. This is pivotal role in advancing our DEI goals, ensuring that our practices reflect our company values and contribute to a thriving society.
• Lead and champion for sustainability, driving DTS initiatives that support commitment to social responsibility and environmental stewardship.
• Accountable for managing headcount and budget for the organization
   

Additional Responsibilities

Ensuring management of the day-to-day functions and escalations are being managed appropriately.

Financials:

• Contribute to IT cost awareness and transparency.
• Support budget management including reporting and forecasting.

Operational excellence:

• Work with other operational groups to manage solution releases to production, including maintenance window coordination
• Demonstrate leadership and expertise in helping team members overcome obstacles
• Interact regularly with Management to drive strategies and report progress 
• Play an active role in team and company-wide architecture discussions.

Project planning and delivery:

• Responsible for the related roadmap and driving the business platform projects
• Actively participate in project scoping and planning activities to ensure alignment between with infrastructure groups
• Participate on Project steering teams to ensure successful delivery
• Ensure delivery all projects consistent with committed dates, budget and scope
• Work with project leader to keep projects on schedule and recommend
• needed action to meet deadlines

Organizational leadership:

• Build and manage a global team
• Fulfill role of mentor with support staff
• Assists management with developing and qualifying staffing plans
• Fosters a culture of safety.

Min. Qualifications

• Must have experience and understanding in the following areas:
• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, management information systems, or related field preferred. 
• Typically, 15+ years of leadership responsibility managing medium to large complex globally distributed teams.
• Experience managing multi-level large teams
• Experience across a broad range of technologies 
• Experience managing outsourced service providers
• Experience managing and negotiating large vendor contracts for software and services
• Experience in architecting the technology infrastructure via understanding of on premise and cloud-based infrastructure components.
• Strong leadership, communication, negotiation, and conflict management skills.
• Highly self-motivated, driven work ethic, keen attention to detail and exceptional customer service orientation.
• Ability to communicate highly technical information in an understandable manner to non-technical audiences through writing and presentations.
• Demonstrated experience with mentoring others on methods and best-practices.
• Ability to multi-task and prioritize in a fast-paced environment and handle multiple issues at once.
• Strong analytical skills: ability to perform complex system analysis and draw conclusions by relating information from different sources, including root-cause analysis and issue resolution.
• Project management experience is a plus.

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Competencies