Manager, Tech Operations - Enterprise IBM i Platform

Mgr. Tech Ops - IBM Platform Infrastructure

Work Model: Onsite, Framingham, MA

Staples is business to business. You’re what binds us together. 

Team Summary: Staples Digital Solutions is responsible for delivering reliable, secure, and scalable technology services that support critical business operations across the enterprise. The IBM Platform Infrastructure team manages the IBM i and IBM Power Systems environment that underpins mission-critical applications, ensuring platform availability, performance, resiliency, disaster recovery readiness, and operational excellence.

Role Summary: The Manager, Technical Operations will lead the provisioning, administration, operation, support, and continuous improvement of Staples’ enterprise IBM i platform environment, including IBM Power server hardware, operating systems, storage, backup, disaster recovery, security, and related infrastructure technologies. This role provides both technical and people leadership for a team of senior IBM i platform engineers, with accountability for the reliability, availability, performance, and security of highly available systems that support mission-critical business applications.

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead the administration, maintenance, monitoring, and support of enterprise IBM i environments and IBM Power Systems infrastructure.
• Ensure high availability, performance, stability, and recoverability of production, development, disaster recovery, and test environments.
• Oversee hardware lifecycle management, operating system maintenance, PTF management, firmware updates, capacity planning, and technology refresh initiatives.
• Drive backup, recovery, replication, disaster recovery, platform monitoring, alerting, and operational health reporting processes.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for platform incidents, outages, operational risks, and complex production issues.
• Partner with cybersecurity, architecture, application development, vendor, and business teams to implement security controls, remediation plans, audit support, and infrastructure improvements.
• Develop and maintain operational procedures, service level objectives, key performance indicators, documentation, and continual process improvement practices.
• Contribute to infrastructure roadmaps and platform strategies while leading migrations, upgrades, consolidations, modernization initiatives, and other technical transformation efforts.
• Manage vendor relationships, support contracts, maintenance agreements, license renewals, budget planning, forecasting, and operational expense activities.
• Lead, coach, mentor, and develop a team of senior IBM i platform engineers while fostering accountability, collaboration, customer focus, and continuous improvement.

What you bring to the table:

• Strong people leadership and team development capabilities with the ability to guide technical teams through complex operational challenges.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, organizational, prioritization, and decision-making skills.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical concepts into business-focused recommendations.
• Ability to influence across technical and business teams while building strong partnerships with internal stakeholders and external vendors.
• Customer-focused mindset with a commitment to service reliability, operational excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Adaptability, resilience, and sound professional judgment in a rapidly evolving technology environment.

What’s needed- Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, a related technical discipline, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 7+ years of progressive hands-on experience supporting IBM i, AS/400, iSeries, IBM Power Systems, or enterprise platform operations.
• 3+ years of people leadership, technical leadership, engineering management, or platform operations management experience.
• Demonstrated experience administering IBM Power server hardware and IBM i operating systems in production environments.
• Experience supporting high-availability, disaster recovery, backup, replication, business continuity, performance management, capacity planning, and infrastructure lifecycle activities.
• Experience implementing security controls, vulnerability remediation, audit support processes, incident management, problem management, and root cause analysis.
• Experience working with enterprise monitoring, automation, and operational support tools while managing multiple priorities and operational workloads simultaneously.

What’s needed- Preferred Qualifications:

• 10+ years of IBM i infrastructure and platform operations experience.
• 5+ years of direct management experience leading infrastructure engineering teams.
• IBM Power Systems, IBM i, ITIL, or related infrastructure certifications.
• Experience with PowerHA, BRMS, MIMIX, Vision Solutions, VIOS, PowerVM, SAN storage, virtualization technologies, and enterprise backup solutions.
• Experience supporting PCI, SOX, or other regulated enterprise environments.
• Experience leading infrastructure modernization, migration, large-scale platform transformation, or automation initiatives.
• Experience managing third-party managed services, vendor contracts, support agreements, and technology investments.

We Offer:

• Inclusive culture with associate-led Business Resource Groups
• 22 days of PTO and Holiday Schedule (7 observed paid holidays + 1 floating holiday)
• Online and Retail Discounts, Company Match 401(k), Physical and Mental 

The salary range represents the expected compensation for this role at the time of posting. The specific base pay may be influenced by a variety of factors to include the candidate's experience, skill set, education, geography, business considerations, and internal equity. In addition to base pay, this role may be eligible for bonuses, or other forms of variable compensation.

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