Director/Sr. Director - Head of Incident and Problem Management

About Northern Trust

As a global leader in innovative wealth management, asset servicing, asset management and banking services, Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS) is proud to guide the world’s most successful individuals, families, corporations and institutions.

Since 1889, we have aligned our efforts with our three guiding Principles That Endure: Service, Expertise, and Integrity. Together, they reflect the three cornerstones of business conduct which we strive to instill in our employees, whom we call partners, and to provide to our clients and the communities we serve worldwide.

With more than 135 years of financial experience and over 24,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Position Summary 

The Senior Director, Technology Global Command Center, Incident & Problem Management is a strategic technology operations leader responsible for ensuring the resilience, stability, and availability of critical technology services supporting global Payments, Custody, Asset Servicing, Treasury, and Wealth Management platforms. 

This executive leadership role oversees the enterprise Technology Global Command Center, and Major Incident Management, Problem Management, Operational Resiliency, Service Recovery, and AIOps capabilities across a complex global environment. The leader will drive operational excellence through modernization, automation, artificial intelligence, predictive operations, and data-driven service management. 

The role is accountable for minimizing business disruption, improving customer experience, reducing technology risk, and transforming operational capabilities to deliver measurable efficiency gains and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reductions. 

Key Responsibilities 

Enterprise Command Center Leadership 

• Lead a globally distributed 24x7x365 Technology Global Command Center supporting critical business services. 

• Establish a proactive operational model focused on service reliability, resiliency, and customer experience. 

• Drive enterprise-wide visibility across infrastructure, applications, cloud, network, security, data platforms, and third-party service providers. 

• Develop operational governance and executive reporting for technology health and service performance. 

Major Incident Management 

• Lead governance for Priority 1 and Priority 2 impacting critical client-facing and regulatory business services. 

• Ensure rapid restoration of services through effective incident command structures and procedures. 

• Establish executive communication protocols during critical technology incidents. 

• Drive continuous improvement of incident escalation, response, recovery, and stakeholder management processes by collaborating with the Incident Management process owner. 

• Reduce MTTR, customer impact duration, and repeat incidents.  

Problem Management & Service Reliability 

• Drive Root Cause Analysis (RCA), corrective action governance, and permanent remediation programs. 

• Identify systemic technology weaknesses and operational risks. 

• Ensure lessons learned translate into actionable engineering improvements and resilience enhancements. 

• Drive continuous improvement of problem management processes by collaborating with the Problem Management process owner. 

• Build proactive prevention programs, reducing recurring issues and operational losses. 

Operational Resiliency & Financial Services Risk Management 

• Partner with technology, operations, risk, compliance, and business leaders to strengthen resiliency of critical financial services. 

• Support operational resilience requirements for payment, custody, liquidity, settlement, and client servicing platforms. 

• Develop recovery strategies, control frameworks, and resilience measurements. 

• Ensure compliance with regulatory expectations and internal control requirements. 

• Support crisis management, cyber event response, and technology recovery exercises. 

AIOps, Automation & Modernization 

• Build and execute a multi-year AIOps and intelligent operations strategy. 

• Implement predictive monitoring, event correlation, anomaly detection, and automated remediation capabilities. 

• Drive adoption of AI, machine learning, GenAI, and agentic technologies across operations. 

• Reduce manual intervention through self-healing and automation-first operating models. 

• Leverage automation platforms to streamline incident response, problem investigation, change validation, and operational reporting. 

• Lead transformation initiatives that simplify operating models and improve service outcomes. 

Technology Transformation 

• Modernize global command center capabilities through observability, telemetry, and advanced analytics. 

• Drive cloud operations maturity across Azure, AWS, and hybrid environments. 

• Establish proactive service assurance, reliability engineering, and operational intelligence functions. 

• Develop strategic roadmaps supporting enterprise technology transformation objectives. 

• Foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. 

Leadership & Talent Development 

• Lead teams across Incident Management, Problem Management, Global Command Center Operations, and Operational Excellence. 

• Develop high-performing leaders capable of operating in complex, mission-critical environments. 

• Build succession pipelines and global operating models supporting follow-the-sun coverage collaborating with the Global Head of Production Assurance. 

• Promote accountability, collaboration, and engineering-led problem solving. 

Required Qualifications 

Education 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related discipline. 

• Master's degree preferred. 

Experience 

• 15+ years of technology operations and service management experience. 

• 10+ years of senior leadership experience managing global technology operations teams. 

• Significant experience within banking, financial services, asset servicing, custody, payments, capital markets, or systemically important financial institutions. 

• Proven leadership of global Command Centers, Network Operations Centers (NOC), Service Operations Centers (SOC), or Technology Operations organizations. 

• Deep experience managing major incidents in highly regulated environments. 

• Demonstrated success leading large-scale transformation and modernization programs. 

Technical & Functional Expertise 

• ITIL Incident Management 

• ITIL Problem Management 

• Major Incident Command 

• Operational Resiliency 

• Service Reliability Engineering (SRE) 

• AIOps Platforms 

• Observability & Monitoring 

• Event Management 

• Automation & Orchestration 

• Cloud Operations (Azure / AWS) 

• ServiceNow ITSM 

• Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery 

• Technology Risk & Controls 

• Operational Risk Management 

• Data Analytics & Operational Intelligence 

Leadership Competencies 

• Executive presence and stakeholder management 

• Strategic thinking and transformation of leadership 

• Crisis leadership and decision-making under pressure 

• Strong communication and influencing skills 

• Continuous improvement mindset 

• Financial and operational management 

• Innovation and technology modernization leadership 

• Change management excellence 

Success Measures 

• Reduction in Major Incident volume and business impact. 

• Improvement in MTTR and service restoration effectiveness. 

• Reduction in repeated incidents through stronger problem management. 

• Increased automation and self-healing capabilities. 

• Improved availability and resiliency of critical business services. 

• Reduction in operational cost and technology TCO. 

• Higher operational maturity through improved observability and AIOps adoption. 

• Improved client and stakeholder satisfaction. 

• Strong audit, regulatory, and risk management outcomes. 

Working with Us

As a Northern Trust partner, you will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture, which has a strong history of financial strength and stability. Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to an inclusive workplace and assisting the communities we serve.

Philanthropy is deeply rooted in Northern Trust’s history and is an essential element of our culture. Employees around the world give their time and talent to work for the greater good of their communities.

Reasonable Accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing adjustments to individuals with health conditions and disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email our HR Service Center at [email protected], or alternatively you can discuss your individual requirements with the recruiter you are working with.

About Our Pune Office

The Northern Trust Pune office, established in 2016, is now home to over 3,000 employees. The office handles various functions, including Operations for Asset Servicing and Wealth Management, as well as delivering critical technology solutions that support business operations across the globe.

Our Pune team takes our commitment to service to heart. In 2024, they volunteered more than 10,000+ hours into the communities where they live and work. Learn more.