Senior Incident Command Leader – Enterprise IT & Payroll

International Business Machines Corporation; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Consulting seeks an Incident Management Leader to provide end-to-end leadership for its Incident Management function within a large-scale government payroll environment. You will drive incident response, executive communications, and cross-functional coordination across multiple teams to ensure rapid resolution and ongoing operational readiness.

You will lead a team, establish situational awareness, and communicate impact and decisions clearly to executives and clients, while improving

Qualifications

• 8–10 years of experience in Incident Management, including leadership of high-urgency incidents in complex, enterprise-scale production environments.
• Demonstrated experience leading Incident Management teams and coordinating cross-functional technical and operational teams during critical service events.
• Strong experience with incident command, escalation management, service restoration, operational readiness, and post-incident review.
• Proven ability to provide clear, concise executive and client communications during high-pressure situations, including communicating business impact, risk, status, decisions, and recovery plans.
• Strong leadership presence with the ability to remain calm under pressure, make sound decisions quickly, and drive accountability across multiple teams.
• Experience working across application, infrastructure, database, operations, change/release, architecture, and service management functions.
• Strong understanding of ITIL Incident Management principles and practices; ITIL certification is an asset.
• Demonstrated ability to identify systemic incident trends and translate lessons learned into process, control, readiness, and operational improvements.
• Excellent stakeholder management, facilitation, written communication, and executive presentation skills.
• Must hold, or be eligible to obtain and maintain, the required Government of Canada security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end management of high-urgency production incidents, ensuring rapid coordination, clear accountability, effective escalation, and timely resolution.
• Provide leadership and direction to the IBM Incident Management team, strengthening incident command practices, operational discipline, consistency, and team performance.
• Establish and maintain strong situational awareness during active incidents, ensuring business impact, technical status, risks, decisions, actions, and dependencies are clearly understood.
• Coordinate across application, payroll operations, infrastructure, database, architecture, change/release, and other delivery teams to drive effective incident response and recovery.
• Lead incident bridges and executive escalations, ensuring the right technical and business stakeholders are engaged at the right time.
• Provide concise, executive-ready communications to IBM and client leadership, clearly articulating impact, current status, risks, actions underway, decisions required, and path to resolution.
• Strengthen escalation processes, Duty Management practices, incident roles and responsibilities, and operational readiness for high-urgency events.
• Ensure rigorous incident documentation, timelines, decision records, follow-up actions, and post-incident reviews are completed to a high standard.
• Identify recurring themes and opportunities to improve incident management processes, controls, operational readiness, reporting, and response effectiveness.
• Track incident management performance through meaningful measures and KPIs and use insights to drive continuous improvement.
• Build strong relationships across IBM delivery teams and client stakeholders and provide calm, decisive leadership during high-pressure situations.
• Coach and develop Incident Management team members while reinforcing accountability, quality, and consistent execution.

Skills

Incident Management

Leadership

Executive communications

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional coordination

ITIL

Education

Technical Diploma

Bachelor's Degree

Job description

IBM Consulting seeks an Incident Management Leader to provide end-to-end leadership for its Incident Management function within a large-scale government payroll environment. You will drive incident response, executive communications, and cross-functional coordination across multiple teams to ensure rapid resolution and ongoing operational readiness.

You will lead a team, establish situational awareness, and communicate impact and decisions clearly to executives and clients, while improving