Supervisor, Cloud Platform Services

The University of Southern California's Information Technology Services (ITS) seeks a dedicated Supervisor, Cloud Platform Services to lead a platform services team. This role involves overseeing the design, implementation, configuration, and daily operations of the ITS platform services. The ideal candidate will have proven expertise in leading platform services such as source code control and DevOps platforms (IaC CI/CD pipelines and tools) hosted on-premises and on public clouds. Strong leadership skills, excellent communication abilities, and experience with owning shared platform services are essential. If you have a passion for ensuring the stability and security of centralized, distributed platform services that enhance developers’ productivity, we invite you to apply and join our innovative team.

Minimum Qualifications:

The candidate for the position of Supervisor, Cloud Platform Servicesmust meet the following qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Computer Information Systems, related fields, or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.

• Six years of work experience in IT, computational science and engineering, high-performance or cloud computing.

• Three years of experience supporting infrastructure and storage services.

• Knowledge of design, deployment, and support of advanced virtualized infrastructures and multiple Operating Systems (e.g., Windows, Linux).

• Expert knowledge of emerging server, cloud, and data center technologies and architectures.

• Proven experience with scalable management automation and orchestration methodologies and tools for cloud platforms.

• In-depth knowledge of networking, routing, firewalls, subnets, subdomains, VLANs, and VxLANs.

• Proven experience with network security and troubleshooting network issues on operating systems.

• Expert ability to develop, design, test, and document improvement solutions and processes (e.g., scripting, automation, workflow) to improve the system’s efficiency, reliability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.

• Demonstrated experience monitoring and proactively managing systems to ensure their performance, availability, security, and capacity.

• Demonstrated proficiency using scripting or other programming languages to automate processes and maintain the system's environments.

• Ability to interpret, analyze, and apply pertinent service-level agreements, policies, procedures, regulations, and other requirements and turn them into actionable outcomes.

• Experience architecting, implementing, and supporting on-premises workloads and IaaS cloud platforms.

• Exemplary communication skills, developing positive working relationships and strong rapport with team members, and interacting with a diverse community of colleagues and stakeholders.

• Proven ability to develop positive working relationships and a strong rapport with team members.

• Demonstrated experience in supervising staff.

• In addition, the successful candidate must also demonstrate, through ideas, words, and actions, a strong commitment to USC’s Unifying Values of integrity, excellence, diversity, equity and inclusion, well-being, open communication, and accountability.

Preferred Qualifications:

The ideal candidate for the position of Supervisor, Cloud Platform Services has the following qualifications:

• Experience in IT, Higher Education, or similar industries.

• Eight years of work experience in IT, computational science and engineering, high-performance or cloud computing.

• At least three years of experience in providing platform services such as source code control (GitHub), IaC CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Docker/Amazon ECS/Azure Container Instances), Kubernetes clusters and observability.

• Experience in provisioning services using IaC (Terraform/Ansible/CloudFormation)

• Proven leadership ability.

THE WORK YOU WILL DO:

As a Supervisor, Cloud Platform Services, you will lead a team of engineers who will handle the design, setup, and operations of ITS’ platform services. As an owner of platform services, you will understand your customers’ needs and continuously enhance platform services to make a positive impact on application teams and developers. You will assign and prioritize tasks, track progress, and ensure great customer service. You'll work with different departments and partners across the university. Your leadership will help the team deliver excellent engineering services and keep all services stable and secure, whether they are centralized, distributed, physical, or virtual.

Job Accountabilities:

• Supervises successful day-to-day operations of the engineering team, ensuring the quality of service on tasks and work assignments. Assesses performance, provides feedback and creates career development plans for staff. Collaborates with key organizational stakeholders, including partners, communicating positively and effectively to deliver high-quality system engineering services and solutions.

• Drives system planning, design, configuration, implementation, updates and maintenance. Follows policies and procedures consistent with university practices. Identifies and recommends ways to improve existing procedures and shares details with stakeholders.

• Builds and drives cloud infrastructure configuration and operation support, collaborating with developers, engineers, and business analysts to meet university needs. Provides troubleshooting support for issues escalated by the customer experience team. Works to improve infrastructure efficiency and effectiveness, building, supporting, and standardizing portfolios of reusable cloud components, services, and interfaces.

• Aids in cultivating an inclusive environment and a culture of trust and transparency, sharing information broadly, openly, and deliberately. Builds and maintains collaborative relationships with diverse groups of peers, team members, and leadership. Promotes an environment that fosters inclusive relationships and creates unbiased opportunities for contributions through ideas, words, and actions that uphold the USC Code of Ethics principles.

• Manages troubleshooting support activities for issues the customer experience team escalated and communicates clearly with relevant stakeholders, as appropriate. Develops and maintains knowledge base articles, tutorials, and training resources.

• Manages server platform design, configuration, and maintenance to support operational efficiencies. Ensures day-to-day system operations are consistent, reliable, and accessible to campus users. Monitors statistical analyses of performance, informing tuning, automation, and optimization activities. Collaborates with team members and management, implementing effective solutions to support the team’s vision. Maintains currency with technology, standards, and best practices. Supports process improvement efforts within the team and across the organization.

THE TEAM:

ITS has embarked on a major digital transformation initiative to continually improve services for faculty, staff, and students in support of USC’s ascent as a leading institution of higher education. The ITS vision aligns strategy, business, and services, affirms ITS cultural values, empowers cross-functional teamwork, embraces world-class best practices, and promotes innovation, excellence, agility, and efficiency. To achieve this vision, ITS is committed to providing a modern technology infrastructure that is resilient and delivers the performance necessary to meet the demands of a growing customer base, training in the latest technologies for its highly productive and motivated workforce, outstanding customer experience, and technology services that are aligned with the university’s mission to provide exceptional learning opportunities for students. ITS is creating a workplace where employees can develop cutting-edge skills, take pride in the services they provide, and have access to the roles and career paths that align to their abilities and potential.

We are looking for top talent to join us on our journey.

ITS CULTURE:

USC’s ITS organization represents a diverse and talented team committed to supporting a collaborative culture and delivering secure and innovative IT services, core to the mission of USC. ITS values accountability, excellence, and commitment to exceptional customer experience. ITS strives for a supportive and inclusive culture that encourages employees to do their best work every day and where individuals are recognized and celebrated for their contributions.

ABOUT USC:

USC is the leading private research university in Los Angeles—a global center for arts, technology, and international business. With more than 47,500 students, we are located primarily in Los Angeles and various US and global satellite locations. As the largest private employer in Los Angeles, responsible for $8 billion annually in economic activity in the region, we offer the opportunity to work in a dynamic and diverse environment in careers that span a broad spectrum of talents and skills across a variety of academic and professional schools and administrative units. As a USC employee and member of the Trojan Family—the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who make USC a great workplace—you will enjoy excellent benefits, including various well-being programs designed to help individuals achieve work-life balance.

Join the USC ITS team and work as a trusted partner in shaping an environment of innovation and excellence.

This position's annual base salary range is $130,000 - $155,000. When extending an offer of employment, the University of Southern California considers factors such as (but not limited to) the position's scope and responsibilities, the candidate’s work experience, education/training, key skills, internal peer equity, federal, state, and local laws, contractual stipulations, grant funding, and external market and organizational considerations.

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Minimum Education: Bachelor's degree Combined experience/education as substitute for minimum education Minimum Work Experience: 6 years Combined experience/education as substitute for minimum work experience Minimum Field Of Expertise: Three years’ experience supporting infrastructure and storage services. Knowledge of design, deployment, and support of advanced virtualized infrastructures and multiple Operating Systems (e.g., Windows, Linux). Expert knowledge of emerging server, cloud and data center technologies and architectures. Proven experience with scalable management automation and orchestration methodologies and tools for cloud platforms. In-depth knowledge of networking, routing, firewalls, subnets, subdomains, VLANs, and VxLANs. Proven experience with network security and troubleshooting network issues on operating systems. Expert ability to develop, design, test, and document improvement solutions and processes (e.g., scripting, automation, workflow) aimed to improve system’s efficiency, reliability, scalability, and cost effectiveness. Demonstrated experience with monitoring and proactively managing systems to assure their performance, availability, security, and capacity. Demonstrated proficiency using scripting or other programming languages to automate processes and maintain the systems environments. Ability to interpret, analyze, and apply pertinent service level agreements, policies, procedures, regulations, and other requirements, and turn them into actionable outcomes. Experience architecting, implementing and supporting on-premise workloads and IaaS cloud platforms. Exemplary communication skills, able to develop positive working relationships and strong rapport with team members, and interact with a diverse community of colleagues and stakeholders. Proven ability to develop positive working relationships and a strong rapport with team members. Demonstrated experience in supervising staff.