Senior IT Reliability & Automation Lead

First Horizon Bank; Memphis (TN); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

First Horizon Bank seeks a seasoned IT engineer to own platform reliability for critical applications on RHEL and lead CI/CD, automation, and incident response efforts.

You will collaborate with business analysts, QA, developers, and release managers to deliver changes through the SDLC, enhancing observability, security, and performance in a high-availability environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Demonstrated ownership and follow-through in complex environments.
• Strong communication and collaboration across distributed teams.
• Proven ability to drive solutions while coordinating multiple stakeholders.
• Experience leading technical design discussions and documenting standards.

Responsibilities

• Own platform reliability for critical applications on RHEL and strive for 99.9%+ availability.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and release automation (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD).
• Automate deployment and operational tasks using Bash and Python, with Ansible or similar tools.
• Lead incident response, perform RCA, remediation, and post-incident learning to reduce MTTR.
• Enhance observability with logging, metrics, traces, dashboards, and alerts.
• Perform capacity planning, tuning, and throughput optimization.
• Manage security posture including patching and hardening.
• Collaborate across teams to deliver changes through the SDLC; contribute to design and testing.
• Review designs for scalability and reliability; mentor junior staff.
• Create runbooks, SOPs, and knowledge articles; participate in on-call and change management.

Skills

Ownership mindset

Client-focused communication

Critical thinking

Independent drive

Technical design leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related field

Tools

Jenkins

GitLab CI/CD

Git

Bash

Python

Ansible

Oracle

PostgreSQL

SQL Server

IBM MQ

Kafka

RabbitMQ

DNS

TLS/PKI

Splunk

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

• Own platform reliability for critical applications on RHEL, targeting 99.9%+ availability.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and release automation (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD), including artifact management, approvals, and rollbacks.
• Automate deployment, configuration, and operational tasks using Bash, Python, and configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible).
• Lead incident response: triage, root cause analysis, remediation, and post-incident learning; continuously reduce MTTR and change failure rate.
• Implement and enhance observability (logs, metrics, traces) using tools such as Splunk/Dynatrace; create actionable dashboards and alerts.
• Perform performance engineering: capacity planning, tuning (OS, JVM, MQ, DB connections), and throughput optimization.
• Manage security posture: vulnerability remediation, patching, certificate and key management, and adherence to hardening standards.
• Partner with business analysts, QA, developers, and release managers to deliver changes through the SDLC; contribute to requirements, design, testing, and documentation.
• Review solution designs for scalability, reliability, and conformance with enterprise architecture and risk controls.
• Create and maintain runbooks, standard operating procedures, and knowledge articles; mentor junior associates and lead technical design sessions.
• Participate in on-call rotation and change/release management processes (e.g., CAB), including after-hours maintenance windows when required.
• Support vendor integrations and coordinate with third parties as needed for incident resolution and upgrades.
• Contribute to disaster recovery planning and validation (failover testing, recovery procedures, and resilience improvements).
  
  

Job Description

What you will do:

• Own platform reliability for critical applications on RHEL, targeting 99.9%+ availability.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and release automation (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD), including artifact management, approvals, and rollbacks.
• Automate deployment, configuration, and operational tasks using Bash, Python, and configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible).
• Lead incident response: triage, root cause analysis, remediation, and post-incident learning; continuously reduce MTTR and change failure rate.
• Implement and enhance observability (logs, metrics, traces) using tools such as Splunk/Dynatrace; create actionable dashboards and alerts.
• Perform performance engineering: capacity planning, tuning (OS, JVM, MQ, DB connections), and throughput optimization.
• Manage security posture: vulnerability remediation, patching, certificate and key management, and adherence to hardening standards.
• Partner with business analysts, QA, developers, and release managers to deliver changes through the SDLC; contribute to requirements, design, testing, and documentation.
• Review solution designs for scalability, reliability, and conformance with enterprise architecture and risk controls.
• Create and maintain runbooks, standard operating procedures, and knowledge articles; mentor junior associates and lead technical design sessions.
• Participate in on-call rotation and change/release management processes (e.g., CAB), including after-hours maintenance windows when required.
• Support vendor integrations and coordinate with third parties as needed for incident resolution and upgrades.
• Contribute to disaster recovery planning and validation (failover testing, recovery procedures, and resilience improvements).
  
  

Required Qualifications

• High energy, take-charge mindset with a strong sense of ownership and follow-through.
• Client-focused approach with strong communication and collaboration skills across distributed teams.
• Demonstrated critical thinking with advanced troubleshooting and debugging in complex, high-availability environments.
• Proven ability to independently drive solutions while coordinating across multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Experience leading technical design discussions and documenting decisions and standards.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related field—or equivalent experience.
  
  

Technical Must-haves

• 8+ years supporting high-availability Unix/Linux platforms in production (RHEL, AIX, or Solaris).
• Proficiency with CI/CD tooling (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD) and Git-based workflows.
• Strong scripting/automation skills (Bash, Python) and hands-on experience with Ansible (or Puppet/Chef).
• Experience running and optimizing SQL queries and working with relational databases (e.g., Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server).
• Experience with message-oriented middleware (e.g., IBM MQ; Kafka/RabbitMQ a plus).
• Solid understanding of networking fundamentals, DNS, load balancing, TLS/PKI, and certificates.
• Observability tooling experience (e.g., Splunk/ELK, Prometheus/Grafana, AppDynamics/Dynatrace) with practical alerting/dashboards.
• Production support experience, including on-call participation and incident/problem management best practices.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications (nice To Have)

• SRE/operational excellence background with experience improving MTTR, change success rate, and automation coverage.
• Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes or OpenShift) in hybrid/cloud environments.
• Experience with secrets management and hardening standards (e.g., CIS benchmarks).
• Familiarity with regulated/financial services environments and associated risk and control practices.
• Exposure to event streaming (Kafka), API gateways, and microservices architectures.