*Major Incident Manager

Ascend Learning is a national leader in data driven, online educational solutions for learners, educators and employers in high-growth, licensure-driven professions spanning healthcare, fitness and wellness, skilled trades, insurance, and financial services. We are passionate about accelerating learning while impacting job readiness, employment success and employee retention with the belief that our work changes lives.

Our culture is intentionally results-driven and selfless with a relentless focus on our customers. We believe in trust, transparency, freedom, and responsibility with a commitment to meritocracy, inclusion, and diversity of thought. Continual investment in our over 1500 employees is also a core principle realized through ongoing professional development and providing opportunities to grow, develop and lead. Ascend Learning is headquartered in Burlington, MA with additional office locations and remote workers in cities across the U.S.

Ascend Learning is hiring a Major Incident Manager to join our team. We are seeking a motivated, energetic individual with strong technical knowledge, and communication skills for our Major Incident Manager. This individual will be responsible for driving major incident resolution across the Ascend organization. The Major Incident Manager will be part of the service management organization and report to the Manager of Incident Management.

This position can work hybrid from our Leawood, Kansas office location preferred. Remote will also be considered.

Responsibilities & Duties:

• Incident Coordination - manage all severity 1&2 incidents from inception to resolution, ensuring quick and correct assessment of the issue, including identifying the impact to a specific business unit, owner(s) and engaging the appropriate resolver group. Provide prompt periodic progress updates to the appropriate parties until detection of the root cause and issue closure.
• Coordinate resolution efforts across multiple applications and groups.
• Submit recommendations to the application and infrastructure teams in order to prevent future incidents and improve overall system stability.
• Assist with Change Management and Problem Management as needed.
• Provide metrics and participate in weekly post Incident Review Analysis meetings, detailing failings or concerns experienced during incident handling that will feed into continual service improvement plans, process and training.
• Provide input into the Incident Management Process, further defining the process flow, documenting expectations and assist in training and guiding impacted parties to adhere to the process.
• Provide after hours on call support on a team rotation. Ability to perform the on call duty as scheduled and assist with coverage as needed.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in an IT program or equivalent work experience.
• ITIL Foundations certification preferred.
• 5+ years of related experience with a background in IT Operations, including support of working applications and infrastructure services.
• 5+ years of experience as a Major Incident Manager working in a medium to large environment and supporting SEV1 and SEV2 incidents.
• Experience with ServiceNow or related Service Management tool.

Skills & Abilities:

• Strong project management skills, including the ability to own and manage multiple incidents simultaneously, lead a cooperative effort among members of a team to react to an incident and resolve to customers/business' satisfaction.
• Excellent critical thinking and problem-solving skills in a service environment supporting multiple applications.
• Excellent oral/written communication skills with the ability to work collaboratively with all levels of the organization.
• Develops other people's confidence in self through consistent action, values and communication.
• Can maintain a holistic perspective, 'big picture', rather than only positional or functional viewpoints.
• Experience and knowledge of the incident management principles and methodologies, specializing in medium/large-scale organizational incident processes.
• Proactively seeks out new and up-to-date information which can be applied to the incident manager role and incident process.
• Ability to perform on call duties as needed/scheduled.
• Proactively manage the resolution of major incidents in a timely manner, ensuring minimal business impact, and initiate escalation procedure as appropriate.
• Prioritizing tasks appropriately and meeting all defined deadlines.
• Perform daily duties with minimal direction.
• Effectively communicates status of major incidents to the appropriate stakeholders.

Ascend Learning, LLC is proud to be an equal opportunity employer (M/F/Vets/Disabled). No agency or search firm submissions will be accepted. Applications for U.S. based positions with Ascend Learning, LLC must be legally authorized to work in the United States and verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

#LI-NK1