Production Control Analyst

Protective Life; Birmingham (AL); On-site; USD 70,000 - 103,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Employee assistance program

Paid time off and parental leave

401(k) plan with company matching

Job summary

Protective Life is seeking an IT Analyst on the Production Control team to coordinate, track and move changes into the environment per change and release management standards. You will standardize version control practices, policies, and tools across environments and collaborate with Development and Infrastructure teams.

The role covers change management, strategy, production support, DR planning, and requires familiarity with mainframe, Windows Server, Linux/UNIX, iSeries-AS/400, and scheduling

Qualifications

• Associate or Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience
• 2+ years of professional IT experience in a multi-tier environment including a mainframe
• Minimum of 2 years working with scheduling and change/release management software

Responsibilities

• Manage the IT service management lifecycle to enable beneficial changes with minimal disruption
• Define and communicate the change, release and deployment process with IT leadership and other teams
• Execute deployment processes to move changes into model and production environments following procedures
• Coordinate workload from service tickets, outages, and change control
• Act as liaison between developers, infrastructure, and project management to plan changes
• Lead formal change management meetings and manage the forward schedule of change
• Standardize deployment processes, policies across environments
• Prepare and revise jobs for processing in model and production environments
• Ensure alignment of application development with IT policies and strategies
• Participate in outage situations and collaborate to restore production environments
• Resolves problems in model/production and monitor performance and availability
• Develop/maintain Application Recovery Plans and participate in DR exercises

Skills

Mainframe

Windows Server

Linux/UNIX

iSeries-AS/400

Scheduling Tools

PowerShell

Education

Associate / Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

BMC Control-M

Workload Automation Tools

Job description

The work we do has an impact on millions of lives, and you can be a part of it. We help protect our customers against life’s uncertainties. Regardless of where you work within the company, you’ll be helping provide protection and peace of mind when our customers need it most. An IT Analyst on the Production Control team is responsible for working within the team, other IT teams, and Application Development teams to coordinate, track and move “in good order” changes into the environment following change management/release management and quality control procedures. This position will lead efforts to standardize version control practices, policies, and tools in the various environments the team supports.

Responsibilities:

Change, Release and Deployment Management

• Manage the IT service management lifecycle to enable beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT services
• Work with IT leadership, Application Development, Infrastructure and other IT resource areas to define and communicate the change, release and deployment process
• Execute deployment process to move ‘in good order’ changes into the various environments following change management / release management and quality control procedures for Model and Production environments
• Responsible for managing the workload from service ticket requests, service outages, change control, and other related projects
• Acts as a liaison between developers, infrastructure, and project management resources to plan changes to the various system and applications
• Provide leadership for formal change management meetings and processes, including management of the forward schedule of change
• Lead efforts to standardize deployment processes, policies and on the various environments
• Prepares jobs for processing:
  • Prepares complex jobs on in model and production environments.
  • Works with development teams to prepare or revise job schedules as necessary

Strategy & Planning

• Provides consultation to application development teams regarding change management requirements and provides recommendations for both the design and action plans for code promotion and new application/system integration
• Coordinates with other Infrastructure teams to configure, install, maintain, and upgrade company's various system environments
• Must have a strong working knowledge of
• Mainframe Environment
• Windows Servers
• Linux and UNIX systems
• iSeries-AS/400
• Scheduling Tools
• Powershell
• Ensures high level integration of application development with IT policies and strategies
• SOX, IT governance, data strategy, security, and other IT functions.
• Makes and executes on well-thought-out decisions on the most complex or ambiguous issues

Production Support

• Participates in outage situations and collaborates with other IT teams to restore the production environment
• Resolves problems in model/production by diagnosing system/application and takes corrective actionAssesses and monitors operating environment for performance, capacity and system availability. Makes recommendations for changes as needed

Disaster Recovery

• Partner with Application Development, Infrastructure, and BCP teams to help develop/ maintain Application Recovery Plans
• Participate in DR exercises with the BCP coordinator and the Application Development teams
• In event of a disaster:
• Coordinate with DR Coordinator and senior leadership on recovery plans
• Validate application, infrastructure, data readiness based on application priority determined by BCP plan and senior leadership
• Once application readiness is confirmed, coordinate activities to restart application processing

Work Experience, Education, Certification / Training Required:

• Associate, Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent work experience required
• Greater than 2 years of professional IT experience in an organization with complex, multi-tiered technical solutions including a mainframe.
• Minimum of 2 years’ experience with a change control processes
• Strong understanding of Distributed Systems environments
• Minimum of 2 years working with scheduling and change/release management software

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Required:

• Strong technical and analytical skills with a track record of resolving complex issues
• Broad work history and knowledge of the following technologies and their uses:
• Windows Server, UNIX, Linux, iSeries-AS/400, BMC Control M, Workload Automation Tools, powershell
• Excellent organizational skills
• Highly self-motivated with ability to work independently
• Excellent oral and written communications skills including the development of procedural documentation and meeting materials
• Has the ability to work effectively under very tight deadline pressures as well as plan, schedule, and execute multiple concurrent activities
• Strong customer service orientation
• Knowledge of scheduling and change technologies.
• On-call availability. Once every six weeks

Employee Benefits:

We aim to protect the wellbeing of our employees and their families with a broad benefits offering. In addition to offering comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance, we support emotional wellbeing through mental health benefits and an employee assistance program. Work/life balance is important and Protective offers a variety of paid time away benefits (e.g., paid time off, paid parental leave, short-term disability, and a cultural observance day). The financial health of our employees is just as important as physical and emotional health. Some of the financial wellbeing benefits include contributions to healthcare accounts, a pension plan, and a 401(k) plan with Company matching. All employees are encouraged to protect their overall wellbeing by engaging in ProHealth Rewards, Protective’s platform to improve wellbeing while earning cash rewards.

Eligibility for certain benefits may vary by position in accordance with the terms of the Company’s benefit plans.

Accommodations for Applicants with a Disability:

If you require an accommodation to complete the application and recruitment process due to a disability, please email [e-mail]. This information will be held in confidence and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the application and recruitment process.

Please note that the above email is solely for individuals with disabilities requesting an accommodation. General employment questions should not be sent through this process.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to being inclusive and attracting, retaining, and growing an inclusive workforce.

Protective’s targeted salary range for this position is $70,000 to $102,667. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors, including but not limited to, job location, skills, and experience. The range listed is just one component of Protective’s total compensation package for employees.