Operational Readiness Lead

Job Title: Operational Readiness Lead

Location: Toronto, ON

Position Type: Direct Hire

Work Type: Hybrid

Salary: C$160K - C$170K/Year

Job Description:

• GTT's client, a leading Canadian financial technology company, is seeking an Operational Readiness Lead with strong ITIL Incident, Problem, and Change Management experience.
• Operating in a flat, agile, and iterative environment, this company prioritizes speed and innovation to maintain its competitive edge. With plans to scale rapidly from 800 to over 1,100 employees within the next 24 months, this role offers an exciting opportunity for growth and meaningful impact.
• This role needs someone who is highly experienced across multiple roles in operations and/or service management. You must be technical enough to understand the high-level architecture of tech environments and workflows, and able to work with many teams to put in place the capabilities each team will need when the product or platform moves into production.
• You should be recognized in your current or previous roles as the "go to" who usually has answers or knows where to find them, whether the questions are specific to your role or not.
• You should be passionate about operational excellence, with a bias towards collaboration, action, and thinking several steps ahead.
• This role is crucial for ensuring that new initiatives are smoothly integrated into the company's operations, minimizing disruptions and maximizing efficiency.

Duties:

• Operational Readiness Planning: Develop and implement comprehensive operational readiness plans for new initiatives, ensuring all operational requirements are met or exceeded.
• Stakeholder Management: Engage with stakeholders across technical and non-technical teams to gather requirements, provide updates, and ensure alignment. Negotiate with stakeholders to find compromises that meet their needs and the product needs.
• Process Optimization: Identify and implement process improvements to enhance operational efficiency and service continuity, particularly within the ITIL Incident, Problem, and Change Management processes.
• Risk Management: Assess and mitigate risks associated with operational changes, ensuring compliance with regulatory and internal standards.
• Training & Support: Ensure that effective training programs are delivered to operational teams prior to launch, to ensure teams are prepared for new processes and tools.
• Performance Monitoring: Track and report on key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of operational readiness initiatives.

Experience:

• Experience executing operational readiness, new product/service introduction or service transition management, ideally within a large financial or fintech organization.
• Experience in these roles within a technology service provider (e.g. ISP, SaaS) also valuable.
• Proven ability to lead stakeholders through change, not in a reporting relationship but leading by influence.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
• ITIL certified or equivalent fluency in the ITIL framework.
• Proficiency as a user of Jira/Kanban, ServiceNow, and observability management tools strongly preferred.
• Project management experience, preferably in Agile frameworks an asset.