Senior Manager, Digital Operations

We are currently seeking a Senior Manager, Digital Operations to join our team.

The Senior Manager, Digital Operations is responsible for overseeing support and operations for Enterprise Applications and mission critical systems, which include CRM, API, and Digital Banking. This role ensures operational excellence, risk management, and strategic leadership across technical teams and projects. The Senior Manager leads a technical team, supports project delivery and transition to operations, and builds strong relationships with internal stakeholders and external vendors. The role also manages escalations, ensures compliance with governance and audit standards, and drives operational excellence through automation, knowledge documentation, and the strategic adoption of emerging technologies such as generative AI to continually evolve service delivery, governance, and system reliability.

Here’s what would be included as a part of your typical day

• Leadership: Oversees the Enterprise Application Support operations team, providing management, coaching, and professional development. Provides mentorship to the team, supporting technical skill growth and conducting performance management activities. Participates in recruitment and retention processes.
• Operations & Risk Management: Oversees daily operations and technical escalations for critical digital banking applications, enterprise applications, and APIs, while proactively addressing issues. Ensures system availability and applies risk management and incident management practices according to First West governance strategies, policies, and procedures. Develops and manages processes for identifying, prioritizing, and resolving escalated end-user help requests, including monitoring, tracking, coordinating related functions, escalating to level 3 and 4 teams, and working with third-party vendor support teams. Adheres to First West change management guidelines, participates in CAB meetings, and maintains audit readiness and compliance.
• Operational Systems Management: Partners with IT Technical teams to manage the operational risk readiness, deployment, and onboarding for mission-critical and secondary system enhancements. Leads operational projects including requirements gathering, configuration, development, testing, and deployment. Identifies needs, recommends improvements, supports ongoing maintenance, and oversees system support. Builds and maintains strategic relationships with external partners and vendors to deliver solutions. Maintains operational accountability for designated systems, ensuring compliance with regulatory updates and supporting audit activities as required.
• Project Management: Collaborates with IT project teams and leaders to support projects, track progress of assigned tasks, and facilitate smooth transitions to operational support. Contributes to cross-functional initiatives within IT and other departments, ensuring effective collaboration among stakeholders. Leads or supports Hypercare teams on relevant projects.
• Relationship Building: Establishes and maintains critical relationships with First West business leads, project teams, technical leaders, external vendors, and service providers to enable productive partnerships. Communicates status updates and expertise to leaders and staff, ensuring clarity on solutions and service expectations. Assists with budget and invoicing discussions with First West and vendors.

Required Skills, Experience & Qualifications

• College, Trade or Tech School Diploma (2 years) in Information Technology or related discipline required
• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology or related discipline preferred
• 5+ years of experience in leading enterprise systems operations and projects; digital banking experience preferred.
• 7+ years of directly managing technical groups with disciplinary responsibility required.
• Experience with system integration, vendor management, and risk management in an enterprise environment.
• Proven track record in project delivery, operational excellence for mission critical systems, and process improvement.
• Advanced knowledge of the relevant regulatory requirements and other concepts, theories, practices and techniques of the Information Technology field, with emphasis on the financial industry.
• Technical operational planning and advanced leadership skills to ensure a holistic, integrated approach to managing and overseeing execution of services, support and solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to identify, assess, and interpret IT requirements with a member-focused approach, within an enterprise context.
• Strong focus on operational excellence, driving consistency through standard operating procedures, playbooks, and service management frameworks.
• Champions modernization through the ethical and effective use of AI-driven tools, enabling smarter decision-making in IT Operations.
• Drives documentation culture and adoption of industry-leading frameworks, ensuring knowledge continuity, operational scalability, and audit readiness.
• Builds a culture of accountability, quality, and continuous improvement, fostering cross-functional collaboration between operations, engineering, and business teams.
• Advanced communication and interpersonal skills to provide advice, direction and guidance to direct reports, peers, and senior leaders
• Strong analytical, problem solving and decision-making skills to manage investigation and resolution of technical problems
• Project management skills to provide oversight
• Displays an understanding of risk and risk ownership by being able to demonstrate adherence to policies and procedures.