Director, Application & Production Operations

Eneric Petroleum Corp.; Phoenix (AZ); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Cambridge seeks a Director of Application & Production Operations to lead reliable, secure, and recoverable operation of business-critical applications and production services. You will establish ownership, standards, and governance across production support, database services, and release-support capabilities, driving service health, resilience, and continuous improvement.

You will partner with Product, Architecture, Infrastructure, cybersecurity, and finance to align investments with business

Qualifications

• Progressive leadership in application operations and production support.
• Experience with complex production environments and third-party integrations.
• Govern production-support models, incident management, and operational readiness.
• Ability to coordinate across Development, Product, Infrastructure and Cybersecurity.
• Experience managing budgets, forecasts, licenses, and vendor contracts.

Responsibilities

• Provide direct and indirect leadership for production support, database services, and release-support capabilities, as well as contractors and managed services.
• Workforce planning, recruitment, coaching, performance management, succession planning, and professional development.
• Resource allocation, on-call and release coverage, cross-training, and organizational effectiveness.
• Lead incidents and executive communications with clear ownership, facts, decisions, and business impact.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Executive communication

Incident management

Vendor management

Budget management

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in IT, engineering, CS, or related field

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 Qualification s

• 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, inc