Director, Application & Production Operations

Cambridge Investment Research, Inc.; Fairfield (IA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Premium benefits package including ...

401K retirement plan with company-m​a"

Eleven paid holidays

Vacation/sick time

Job summary

Cambridge Investment Research, Inc. is seeking a Director of Application & Production Operations to lead the reliable, secure, and recoverable operation of business-critical applications and production services.

You will establish governance across production support, database services, and release support, including on-call coverage and vendor management. The role focuses on service health, incident response, resilience, and continuous improvement, working with product, architecture,

Qualifications

• Progressive leadership experience in application operations or site reliability.
• Experience with production-services, incident management, and service ownership.
• Ability to govern cross-functional teams and manage vendors and budgets.

Responsibilities

• Lead production support, database services, and release-support teams.
• Oversee incident response, planning, and service health governance.
• Develop roadmaps, operating models, and executive communications.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic thinking

Incident management

Vendor management

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in IT/Engineering/CS or equivalent

Tools

Dynatrace

Azure Monitor

Application Insights

Splunk

PagerDuty

ServiceNow

Job description

Job Summary

The Director, Application & Production Operations leads the reliable, secure, supportable, and recoverable operation of Cambridge’s business-critical applications and production services. The role establishes operational ownership, standards, and governance across production support, database services, application operations, managed file transfer, batch processing, observability, release support, and assigned enterprise platforms. The position is accountable for service health, operational readiness, incident response, resilience, lifecycle risk, vendor performance, sustainable support models, and continuous improvement.

Key Deliverables And Responsibilities

This position provides direct and indirect leadership for production support, database services, and assigned application-operations and release-support capabilities, as well as contractors, consultants, and managed service providers supporting the function. Responsibilities include workforce planning, recruitment, coaching, performance management, succession planning, professional development, resource allocation, on-call and release coverage, cross-training, and organizational effectiveness.

Leadership and Partnership Expectations

• Advises senior technology and business leaders on application risk, investment priorities, production service health, lifecycle exposure, and operational readiness.
• Creates transparent governance for service ownership, demand, prioritization, lifecycle decisions, releases, exceptions, and service performance.
• Leads major incidents and executive communications with clear ownership, facts, decisions, business impact, and follow-through.
• Builds strong partnerships across Product, application development, architecture, infrastructure, cybersecurity, service management, finance, procurement, vendors, and business teams.
• Uses data to identify trends, remove recurring failure patterns, improve service experience, and direct investment toward the highest-value outcomes.
• Promotes disciplined release practices, documentation, knowledge management, cross-training, and succession planning to reduce key-person dependency.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic thinking
• Executive communication
• Influencing without authority
• Operational and customer focus
• Financial management and vendor negotiation
• Change leadership and organizational development
• Risk-based decision making

What We Are Looking For

• Progressive leadership experience in application operations, production support, application support, site reliability, database operations, release management, or technology service operations, including leadership of managers and multidisciplinary technical teams responsible for business-critical production services.
• Experience operating complex production environments spanning internally developed applications, commercial applications, SaaS platforms, databases, middleware, APIs, integrations, managed file transfer, enterprise scheduling, batch processing, web and application servers, and third-party dependencies.
• Demonstrated experience establishing or governing production-support models, incident and problem management, operational readiness, service ownership, application observability, resilience, lifecycle management, or related production disciplines, with sufficient breadth to lead an integrated application and production operations function.
• Ability to distinguish operational ownership from Development, Product, business, Infrastructure, Architecture, and Cybersecurity accountabilities and coordinate effectively across those boundaries.
• Experience managing vendors, contracts, operating and capital budgets, forecasts, licensing, support services, and investment decisions.
• Ability to build roadmaps, business cases, operating models, metrics, and executive communications that connect technical decisions to business outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to use operational data to improve service availability, restoration performance, release quality, processing reliability, vendor performance, risk reduction, or customer experience.
• Strong judgment, communication, collaboration, stakeholder management, and leadership through incidents, competing priorities, change, and modernization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in information technology, engineering, computer science, business, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Industry: Experience in financial services or another regulated, risk-sensitive environment.
• Application Operations: Experience leading production support, application operations, service ownership, operational readiness, and major-incident practices.
• Data and Integration: Experience with database services and SQL platforms, ETL, enterprise scheduling, batch processing, managed file transfer, APIs, and middleware.
• Observability and Incident Platforms: Experience with application-performance monitoring, logging and telemetry, incident-management and paging platforms, alert-quality management, and service-health reporting. Experience with tools such as Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Splunk, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, or comparable enterprise platforms is preferred.
• Release and Vendor Operations: Experience with release and change governance, SaaS and vendor-supported applications, vendor escalation, and production acceptance.
• Cloud: Experience supporting Azure-hosted application and database services and hybrid production dependencies.
• Methods and Certifications: Experience applying ITIL, site reliability engineering, service ownership, operational readiness, and business-continuity practices. Relevant cloud, service-management, reliability, business-continuity, or related certifications are preferred.

Why Cambridge?

Cambridge has competitive benefits and promotes a work/life balance to encourage individual success.

• Premium benefit package including medical, vision, dental, life and long-term disability insurance
• Vacation/sick time
• 401K retirement plan with company matching program
• Eleven paid holidays

You can find more details about our comprehensive benefits packagehere.

Cambridge Overview

Cambridge is a financial solutions firm that provides business support services to thousands of independent financial advisors. These advisors offer personalized investment services including wealth management, financial planning, and retirement services to individuals and families across the country. Cambridge provides significant compliance, technology, and transaction processing support to these financial advisors and their offices.