Manager, IT Systems; Applications & Operations

Position: Manager, IT Systems (Applications & Operations)
Space

X was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today Space

X is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.

MANAGER, IT SYSTEMS (OPERATIONS & APPLICATIONS)

Space

X is looking for an experienced Manager, IT Systems (Operations & Applications). This role will encompass leading and managing IT teams dedicated to Network Operations Center (NOC), Security Operations Center (SOC), enterprise applications, and Dev Ops practices. Candidates must have experience working in organizations capable of meeting the demanding needs of "high caliber engineers" while also supporting critical operations such as launch and mission operations and 24x7 manufacturing operations.

The ideal candidate will be flexible and flourish in a fast paced, always changing and challenging environment. Candidate should be a self-starter and have excellent motivation, leadership, and ingenuity to excel at this position.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Define requirements, perform research, evaluate vendors/solutions, design/implement solutions, and provide ongoing support for all technologies in scope. Provide simple but effective scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Drive consistent standardized solutions across Space
  
  X for all software, configurations, and processes.
• Implement tools and processes for efficient and effective operational management of the environment -- change management, monitoring, alerting, incident handling, customer request handling, etc.
• Apply security-minded decision processes and maintain strong attention to detail.
• Define, manage, and execute on a roadmap of projects that continues to raise the bar through implementing innovative technology, tools, automation, and processes with a team of engineers and administrators.
• Interact with internal customers to provide solutions and resolve problems in a timely and proactive manner. Serve as a primary liaison from IT to customers.
• Be involved, advise and participate in the technical decisions of the teams they oversee.
• Actively participate in crises as they arise, applying a strong sense of ownership and maintaining appropriate communication with stakeholders.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in a STEM discipline and 5+ years of IT operations/Dev Ops engineering OR 7+ years of IT operations/Dev Ops engineering experience in lieu of a degree.
• 4+ years of experience in IT management.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Professional experience with configuration management tools and concepts.
• Experience organizing and leading teams of IT engineers, of varying size and scope, toward common goals.
• Expertise in creating repeatable, reliable, scalable systems architectures, with high availability, fault tolerance, performance tuning, monitoring, and statistics/metrics collection.
• Experience with configuration management, provisioning, infrastructure as code, and other Dev Ops concepts and tools.
• Must be operationally minded and drive for the highest uptime of systems.
• Experience owning all aspects of corporate IT operations teams in a distributed enterprise environment.
• Networking experience in IPv4, switching, routing, firewalls and HA architecture.
• Must be comfortable working with mission critical and sensitive systems, with a sense of urgency appropriate to the responsibilities.
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills with the ability to communicate with internal/external customers, vendors, management etc. in both formal and informal situations.
• Experience managing NOC/SOC functions, enterprise applications support (e.g., ERP, CRM, Service Now), threat detection, incident response, CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and observability tools (Splunk/ELK, Promethe Grafana).

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Ability to pass Air Force background checks for Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg.
• Ability to travel (