Sr Mgr, Atlas Program Functional Operations

Role Summary

The Sr. Manager of Program Functional Operations ATLAS has the overall responsibility to lead a team that oversees and executes the program’s functional specifications, alignment of evolving business needs against the strategic program vision and execution of all required design documentation. This role will engage, through excellent communication and collaboration, key business stakeholders in effective discovery efforts to gather and validate business requirements and configuration needs. This role will also provide functional direction to appropriate technical system programmers, support audits, and lead identification and development of process automation opportunities.

Role Responsibilities

Functional Operations Management – 40% of Time Spent

• Provides expertise and execution of functional delivery needs throughout the program lifecycle – inclusive of documentation, timeline development and status tracking – and leads the execution and strategy of defined day 2 items.
• Develop a deep understanding of the current business processes, the new platform’s functional capabilities, the system application environment and industry best practices to better support program strategic goals, business requirement needs and an excellent consumer experience.
• Acts as a driver for the delivery of the new system platforms by coordinating, identifying and motivating cross-functional teams to execute a plan and leverage the most out of new systems. Recommends opportunities, in Partnership with Director of Change a nd Training Management, communications, programs and services to improve business and IT alignment to program objectives and ongoing process improvement opportunities.
• Engage, through excellent communication and collaboration, key business stakeholders in effective discovery efforts to gather and validate business requirements and configuration needs.
• Leads efforts to develop and support process automation opportunities.
• Ensures excellent customer satisfaction and success throughout the system implementation process while also balancing the ability to adjust throughout the program to ensure the best execution.
• Partners with Insights team to obtain comprehensive view of business process and consumer trend behavior that will further identify program requirements and opportunities.
• Foster a team environment that encourages strong relationships with client-facing stakeholders to become a known and reliable resource that understands development requirements and decisions that balance development, and business and customer needs.
• Responsible for leading a team of Functional Leads to develop program specifications, functional direction to appropriate program developers,

Leadership and Management – 30% of Time Spent

• Communicate technology challenges and opportunities to key business stakeholders to ensure buy-in and prioritization.
• Ensure core team delivers strong results by driving alignment, problem solving and collaborative relationships across program functional groups, external vendor and key business stakeholders
• Understand, advocate and communicate company and core team objectives, vision and strategy to staff to ensure contribution towards achieving VCI’s goals
• Establish, monitor and lead individual team member objectives - to ensure capacity and application performance management - and competencies in alignment with Talent Management practices.
• Frequently interface with VCI IT and business line leadership to understand near and long term needs and identify opportunities for the CMS program to drive value and efficiency.
• Ensure consistent technical solutions and agile methodology adoption throughout core team
• Recruiting (interviewing and hiring), appraising performance, rewarding and disciplining employees (as required), training, succession planning, coaching, addressing complaints and resolving problems, work planning, assignment and direction

Vendor Management – 20% of Time Spent

• Manage operational relationships and expectations with key vendors and service providers to ensure they cost-effectively meet the needs of the ATLAS system program and organization in a socially and compliant manner
• Ensure multi-sourced vendor solutions are well defined and documented, and support model meets Business expectations
• Review vendor support summaries on a timely basis and work to resolve discrepancies quickly.
• Monitor and measure vendor performance against established SLA's, ensuring quality delivered by vendor meets contractual obligations

Budgeting, Finance and Administration: – 10% of Time Spent

• Drive down costs proactively through tight management of support activities and initiating application enhancements to fix defects showing expected ROI.
• Assist/ lead Forecast budgetary requirements for annual planning rounds
• Seek opportunities for improvements and cost reductions.
• Define and develop initial budget and project definitions for strategic technology initiatives and prioritize the approved initiatives

Hybrid

Primary Location

United States-Virginia-Herndon

Education

Years of Relevant Experience:

• 10+ years of experience, preferably within the Auto Finance Industry, in successfully managing complex projects and programs to include external suppliers through the full project lifecycle, from conception through rollout and ongoing maintenance
• 7+ years of experience, preferably within the Auto Finance Industry, in functional management to include applying a structured methodology to the successful management, tracking, planning, monitoring and reporting of concurrent, multiple functional projects spanning broad geographies and organizations

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Business Finance, Information Technology/Computer Science or related discipline

Desired

• Advanced Degree a plus
• ITIL Certification a plus

Skills: General

• Negotiation, influencing and conflict resolution skills; ability to create an open environment where conflicts as to project priorities and funding decisions can be aired and resolved in an objective manner
• Demonstrated record of strong leadership and motivational skills resulting in quality products, high employee retention and morale within their teams
• Cost accounting, forecasting and budgeting capabilities
• Ability to break down major issues and problems into workable pieces; see whole situation behind a problem or issue; able to understand causes, effects and implications
• Establish/manage relationships with key business stakeholders across the organization and executive leadership to influence strategic partnering and develop solutions that provide new sources of business value.
• Strong technical design and implementation skills
• Strong troubleshooting skills
• Ability to learn and adapt to new technologies
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills (both written and verbal) and sharp business acumen; ability to communicate and present to a wide variety of audiences, both business and technical

Required

Specialized Skills:

• Captive automotive business model and processes
• Excellent influencing, facilitation, and partnering skills.
• Individual should be analytical, flexible, team-oriented, have excellent interpersonal, communication, and follow-up skills with strong attention to detail and ability to multi-task
• Proven ability to quickly understand business requirements and translate them into technical development requirements.
• Large scale project/ program management
• Strong experiences and skills in project management and Agile development methodologies.
• Extensive proven experience in:
• Strong track record of leading and developing program platforms and communities which yield high correlations to business stakeholder engagement, customer-centricity, and significant revenue growth.

Desired

• Experience with enterprise program management tools (i.e., HP ALM, Jira, Confluence, MS Office)
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or another related field, or equivalent work experience

Work Flexibility

• Must be willing to travel up to 15%
• Must be willing to work off-hours to provide managerial oversight to program development activities that must take place on nights and weekends.