Head - Business Application Support - Amazon - Seattle

Job description
Amazon.com currently employs approximately 38,000 employees around the globe and is experiencing explosive growth both geographically and business lines. As the owners of financial, human resource and payroll platforms the Business Application teams are pivotal to the continued success of the company. The scale and relentless focus on UI at Amazon forces us to think outside the normal IT paradigms.

The platform is compromised of third party transactional applications (such as Oracle financials and Peoplesoft HCM), home grown solutions (such as vendor payments and recruiting) and business intelligence solutions. We are serious about innovating, but doubly so about operational excellence. As a key leader within the Business Applications organization you will own all operating aspects of the entire business application stack including Oracle Financials (general ledger, payables, receivables and fixed assets), peoplesoft HCM, Kronos MyTime, Cognos, Hyperion and a number of home grown applications built on the Amazon technology stack (Java, rails etc). The primary responsibilities are 1) Managing the financial close 2) production issue remediation 3) production issue prevention through operational excellence and 4) infrastructure strategy inclusive of capacity, availability and disaster recovery management.

The long term objectives for this leader include:
Building/Developing a global organization capable of leading a multi-year transformation
Relentless drive to reduce service disruption minutes to zero through disciplined execution
Be recognized in the industry for providing the best service per dollar. We are a low margin business. While we do not focus on the frills, we never compromise on the fundamentals of our services
Defining a robust set of metrics that truly measure the effectiveness of IT services on a global basis.
It is expected the right candidate for this position will achieve all of the below by the end of the first 12 months in the role:

1) Embrace and transmit the Amazon culture and leadership principles through out the organization.
2) Gain a full understanding of the Business Application platform from the technical stack to the business context.
3) Define the operational plan to achieve the vision
4) Build / upgrade the leadership to execute the plan
5) Build / upgrade the technical talent to achieve the plan
6) Build credibility with key customers and stake holders. You should build your reputation through big picture thinking balanced by delivering on your commitments.
7) Flawless execution - Set and achieve service level agreements by leveraging efficient, scalable processes and metrics that measure the true impact on the customer.
8) Recruit & retain world-class talent, with particular emphasis on architecture, and develop a talent acquisition plan that includes consideration of remote teams where the most efficient resources are available to provide 24/7 service.

Its an exciting team to join the team as they work through their multi-year transformation initiative forcing them to push the technical boundaries of their platforms.
Bachelors degree in engineering, computer science, or related discipline.

Requirements
The ideal candidate is most likely to be a hybrid: part visionary/part leader/part builder/part operator. The distributed service oriented systems architecture of our platform, and decentralized nature of our organization, presents a significant intellectual and operational challenge to the BAO team. It demands a leader who is passionate about the opportunity to lead a critical corporate IT team at a fast growing Fortune 200 company and who is always driving continuous improvement and simplification for users.
Meeting these challenges demands a leader with the ability to dive deep into both the technical and the associated business processes. They should have broad technical depth across the entire infrastructure stack. They will have a track record for solving business problems through the use of innovative technologies.

Amazon has very high expectations for its technical staff. This leader must command the respect - and be able to lead a team - of world-class engineers and managers. This leader must have experience building and operating large-scale infrastructure with a track record of simplification. He or she will have a track record of making high judgment decisions about what to buy and what to build.
This leader also needs to have proven ability to define, design for, and meet service level agreements. It is important that this leader have an operational component to their leadership skill set.

Lastly due to our decentralized nature the position requires the ability to effectively manage the internal organizations that connect to or use our infrastructure services. This role needs to identify the leverage points, white space and opportunities to de-couple.

Strong candidates will ideally have both deep and executive-level experience at a large Fortune 500 company where internal applications are often homegrown or highly customized. This person will have lead engineering and operations teams (either internally or externally facing) and overseen a sizable, globally dispersed staff. This leader will have deep technical expertise and be extremely customer-focused and metrics-driven.
Professional traits that are not unique to this position, but necessary for Amazon leaders:
Exhibits excellent judgment
Hires great people. Develops great people.
Has relentlessly high standards
Deeply technical - we look for leaders that read the entire manual not the “cliff” notes
Thinks strategically, but stays on top of tactical execution
Expects and requires innovation of her/his team
Thinks big and has convictions
Results oriented
Has the innate ability to inspire passion in others
MBA preferred but not required. Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science, or related discipline.

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