Job description

DevOps Manager

The Company

In over five decades of business MIKI Travel have grown to become one of the most influential Global Wholesaler’s in the world. With offices in over 36 countries around the world we offer a complete travel product. Our business diversity ranges from vast numbers of individual tours (FIT), large group series, ad-hoc group tours and covers restaurants, coaches and sightseeing products.

We aim to deliver outstanding customer service and satisfaction through continuous innovation, development and investment in systems and technology.

About the Department

The eBusiness (FIT) division consists of Sales, Purchasing and Technology. Our Team in Technology consist of Project Management, Business Analysts, Developers, Quality Assurance Technicians, DevOps Administrators and Client Support Analysts. The Team is located on and off shore in London, Bangkok and Delhi.

We distribute competitive hotel rates and travel products via our B2B XML & JSON API’s. We connect our clients directly to the wholesalers, retailers and travel suppliers that we partner, increasing their exposure and enabling our clients to reach customers in new markets.

We process over 350 million searches per day through our API and we continue to grow at a rapid pace year on year.

We are currently seeking an eBusiness DevOps Manager to join our dynamic, fast paced eBusiness Technology division, working closely with our CTO and Leadership Team.

Job Purpose

To be responsible for the efficient and effective operation of the eBusiness Systems DevOps Team. The realm of responsibility of the DevOps Team includes dedicated computing resources, cloud-based computing resources, network connectivity for public access to and private interconnectivity of eBusiness resources and interconnection of dedicated and shared computing resources. The DevOps Team is also responsible for deploying software to production servers. The DevOps Team has staff spread across two offices (Bangkok and London) and may occasionally include outside contract resources.

The DevOps Manager will be responsible for developing general policies and procedures related to management of computing and networking infrastructure; overseeing and facilitating the DevOps Team project backlog; managing relationships and contracts with third party vendors including but not limited to data centres, telecommunications providers, software vendors, and IT consulting firms); assisting in setting and managing the IT budget; recruiting and staff training; facilitating staff development with tools including at least performance appraisals and development plans.

This position operates with moderately high responsibility and authority with many of the job responsibilities to be acted upon without high level direct supervision.

As a DevOps manager, you will be heavily involved in both the worlds of development and operations. You will play a key role in the development of new ideas for products and services and manage the process of turning these ideas into realities. This could include participating in product brainstorming meetings, overseeing the creation of product mock-ups, and identifying possible design flaws until the resulting product is satisfactory. On the operations end, you may work to set up the process by which the product will be produced on a larger scale and figure out how it will be distributed to consumers.

Main Responsibilities

• Develop policies and procedures for monitoring and managing the IT infrastructure which includes such things as Service Level Agreements, disaster recovery, incident management and escalation, and high availability
• Manage relationships with third party vendors and in partnership with the eBusiness Manager or designee which includes contract and service level agreement negotiation and periodically meeting with account managers to discuss service status and common operating policies and procedures
• Manage critical system incidents by deploying resources as necessary to correct system failures. Investigate root causes of critical incidents and document as appropriate. Propose changes to systems, policies, and procedures to avoid future events
• Manage team staff including recruiting new employees, creating orientation programs for new staff, writing and delivering performance appraisals and development plans, and facilitating employee coaching and progressive discipline, as needed
• Manage production release deployments, ensure full understanding of deployment procedures, and direct resources as necessary to complete the deployment in a timely and efficient way with minimal system interruption
• Lead strategic direction of IT services and operations by investigating and proposing implementation of new technologies that improve team efficiency or improve service availability
• Contribute to budgeting and planning, working with the eBusiness Manager and other designated managers
• To drive IT transformation. Someone who has an ability to look at the big picture, can understand the complete workflow from idea to complete product and can break it down into work centres
• Someone who knows about practices theory of constraints and can find out what are the bottlenecks in the process and which areas need to be addressed and can drive that change
• Someone who is familiar with practices such as Agile, Kanban, TDD, BDD, continuous delivery, infrastructure as a code, cloud, containers and can map the tools for the job to be done
• Someone who could lead a team of technology professionals, both ops and dev/qa, and can build collaboration between the team and see through the transformation.

Skills and Experience

 Relevant Skills/Characteristics

• Self-motivated, assertive, and respectful in a team environment
• Able to travel on an occasional basis, including internationally

Required Experience/Knowledge:

• Understanding of various software development process models
• Agile knowledge and experience in Agile Scrum
• Version One, Jira or another Agile project management tool – a plus, but not required
• Confluence or another online documentation portal – desirable - a plus, but not required
• To be successful in the DevOps manager role, it is important to have good communication and interpersonal skills
• To be highly organized in order to oversee projects from idea conception, to development and implementation
• The ability to see the big picture while also being detail-oriented

Essential

• Impeccable organisational skills, diligent, with a focus on detail and accuracy
• Proactive and enthusiastic
• Excellent with communication, documentation, and presentations
• Able to prioritise work from multiple sources
• Is highly articulate and able to communicate clearly and unambiguously
• Has an outgoing personality with tenacity, self-direction, drive and passion
• Is able to work effectively in a complex, diverse, changing environment
• Builds effective relationships through positive communication
• Confident at facilitating meetings with small and large number of people at all levels
• Has the ability to work and communicate well with cultural diversity
• Is able to use initiative and work to tight deadlines under pressure
• To be available out of office hours/early/late when managing/monitoring the release deployments
• At least five years of management or leadership experience within an IT Operations environment

Desirable

Experience within the travel industry

Familiarity with Agile and Scrum development practices

With 50 years’ experience in the wholesale travel industry, Miki Travel offers an exciting international working environment and you will be based in our contemporary offices in central London near to Mansion House, Cannon Street and Bank Underground stations. You will receive an attractive package with complimentary on site fitness centre and swimming pool as well as flexi-time working hours (based on 7,5 hours from Monday to Friday).

Date Posted

28 June 2019

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