Tower Lead (Support & Operations)

Job Summary

The Operations Manager is responsible for leading and overseeing daily operational activities, ensuring service delivery excellence, optimizing processes, managing resources, and driving continuous improvement initiatives. The role acts as the bridge between business stakeholders, operational teams, vendors, and leadership to ensure operational stability, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

For an Integration Services Operations Manager responsible for IBM MQ, IBM API Connect (APIC), EDI, B2B integrations, APIs, Middleware, and Integration Platforms, the role should extend beyond traditional operations management and focus on service reliability, message flow stability, API governance, business transaction continuity, and platform lifecycle management.

Operations Manager – Integration Services (IBM MQ & APIC)

Position Summary

The Operations Manager for Integration Services is responsible for the end-to-end operational governance, availability, reliability, performance, security, and continuous improvement of enterprise integration platforms including IBM MQ, IBM API Connect (APIC), EDI gateways, middleware components, and related integration technologies.

The role ensures uninterrupted business transactions across applications, customers, suppliers, and partners while leading platform operations teams, vendors, architects, and engineering functions.

Key Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities 1. Service Delivery & Operational Management Own the operational health of IBM MQ, APIC, and integration platforms. Ensure platform availability, resilience, and SLA compliance. Lead Incident, Problem, Change, and Request Management processes. Ensure rapid restoration of services during P1/P2 incidents. Drive operational reviews and service performance governance. Monitor end-to-end business transaction flows across integrated systems. Accountable Metrics Platform Availability % Message Delivery Success Rate API Availability % MTTR Incident Backlog SLA Compliance 2. IBM MQ Platform Management Operational Responsibilities Queue Manager health monitoring. Message Queue depth management.\\\\r\\\\nDead Letter Queue (DLQ) management. Channel monitoring and optimization. Message throughput analysis. Multi-instance Queue Manager governance. MQ clustering administration oversight. Capacity planning for messaging infrastructure. Ownership Areas Message persistence strategy. MQ failover readiness. HA/DR validation MQ security governance. Certificate in lifecycle management. MQ Vulnerability remediation. KPIs Queue utilization % DLQ message count Channel availability % Messages/sec throughput Queue Manager uptime % 3. IBM API Connect (APIC) Management Operational Responsibilities API Gateway availability management. API lifecycle governance. External/Internal API onboarding. Consumer onboarding process. API version management. API policy governance. API analytics monitoring. Security Responsibilities OAuth governance. TLS/Certificate management. Rate limiting governance. Developer Portal governance. API threat protection controls. KPIs API Success Rate % API Response Time API Error Rate (4XX/5XX) Gateway Availability % Consumer Satisfaction 4. Integration Reliability Engineering Define SLOs and SLIs for integration services. Establish observability framework. Implement proactive monitoring. Drive predictive capacity planning. Automate failure detection and recovery. Monitoring Areas IBM MQ metrics APIC analytics Azure Monitor Splunk dashboards Dynatrace/AppDynamics ServiceNow Event Management 5. Capacity & Performance Management IBM MQ Queue depth growth trends. Channel utilization trends. Messaging throughput forecasting. Storage consumption trends. CPU and Memory utilization. APIC API traffic forecasting. Gateway scaling requirements. Consumer growth trends. Backend dependency capacity. Deliverables Monthly Capacity Reports. Forecast models. Scaling recommendations. Risk assessments. 6. Major Incident & Problem Management Lead During P1/P2 Incidents Executive stakeholder communication. War-room coordination. Vendor engagement. Business impact assessment. Recovery leadership. Problem Management Root Cause Analysis (RCA). Known Error Database maintenance. Preventive action tracking. Trend analysis. 7. Lifecycle & Vulnerability Management IBM MQ MQ version lifecycle planning. Queue Manager upgrades. Security patching governance. APIC Gateway upgrades. Management Server upgrades. Developer Portal upgrades. Security hardening. Accountability Technology roadmap. End-of-Life compliance. Vulnerability remediation. Audit readiness. 8. Vendor & Stakeholder Management Internal Stakeholders Application Owners Enterprise Architects Security Teams Infrastructure Teams Business Owners External Stakeholders IBM HCLTech Cloud Providers Integration Partners Responsibilities Service reviews. Vendor governance. Contractual KPI reviews. Escalation management. 9. Financial Management Run-cost governance. License optimization. Capacity forecasting. Budget planning. Cost reduction initiatives. Cost Areas IBM MQ licensing. APIC licensing. Cloud infrastructure. Monitoring platforms. Support contracts. 10. Continuous Service Improvement Integration platform modernization. Event-driven architecture __________________________________________ 

Skill Requirements

Required Skills

Integration Technologies

IBM MQ

IBM API Connect

DataPower

Kafka

EDI / B2B Integration

REST APIs

SOAP Services

Event-Driven Architecture

Cloud & Infrastructure

Azure

Kubernetes / OpenShift

Linux

Windows Server

Network & DNS

Service Management

ITIL

Incident Management

Problem Management

Change Management

Capacity Management

Service Governance

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Operations Management

Service Delivery Management

ITIL / IT Service Management

Vendor & Stakeholder Management

Financial and Budget Management

Risk and Compliance Management

Leadership and Team Development

Continuous Improvement / Lean / Six Sigma

Reporting and KPI Management

Strong Communication & Presentation Skills

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Key KPIs

SLA Compliance %

System Availability/Uptime %

Incident Resolution Time

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Resource Utilization %

Budget Variance %

Escalation Volume

Process Automation Savings

Service Improvement Delivery Rate

Employee Engagement & Attrition Metrics

Other Requirements

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in business, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.

Typically, 8-15+ years of operational or service delivery experience.

Experience managing cross-functional teams and large operational environments.

ITIL, PMP, Lean Six Sigma, or equivalent certifications are advantageous.

For your background in IT service delivery, infrastructure, cloud, and vendor governance, a modern Operations Manager role would additionally focus on:

Service governance and customer reviews

Vendor management (HCLTech, TCS, Proact, OEMs, etc.)

Capacity and availability management

Incident, Problem, Change governance

Operational transformation and automation

Financial governance and portfolio performance

Executive stakeholder communication

This would position the role very close to Service Delivery Manager / Operations Director / Service Owner responsibilities in large enterprise IT organizations.