Job Description

Job Description: Manager, Systems

The Financial technology space "Fintech" is booming, and Guaranteed Rate is at the center of it. We are growing like crazy and are one of the most successful Chicago startups. We are focused on automating the mortgage process for consumers. Imagine getting a mortgage with no email, no faxing, no stack of papers in 10 days or less instead of 40 or more! If you have been through the process of buying a home, you know how amazing this will be. We are the #5 lender in the country and one of only 2 that is independent (not a bank) so we are in a good spot to win this race. We have already made tremendous strides and we are looking for someone who wants to help us finish the job and disrupt the entire industry.

Who is GR?

Guaranteed Rate is not your typical company and certainly not your typical mortgage company. We are technology driven, have tons of energy and we love what we do - great people and great products alongside our impeccable customer service (83 NPS, unheard of!). We're in a River North office with exposed brick and duct work, windows we can actually open during the summer. The awesomeness doesn't end there, we also have:

• Holiday parties? We got'em! Not just major holidays, any holiday.... Mardi Gras, Valentine's Day, St. Paddy's Day, Opening Day, Boxing Day (for our Canadian employee), Sweetest Day, Groundhog Day, etc..
• Game room, library and white board paint for collaboration - yeah, it's awesome.
• Access to our free GR nurse practitioner. Psshh who needs a doctor's appointment when our nurse can do it all? Did we mention the free part?
• 401k with some matching, Blue Cross health care coverage - yup, dental and vision too,
• short-term disability, life insurance - we got ya covered on this one, legal assistance - for a small monthly fee.
• Oh, and did we mention you get a big fat employee discount on the origination fees to get a
• new mortgage or refinance thru Guaranteed Rate?

So what do we want from you?

The Manager, Systems will take responsibility for systems administration and delivery here at Guaranteed Rate, they will own the delivery of servers, storage, Active Directory and Office 365 as well as other ancillary technologies. The successful candidate will have deep technical knowledge of these platforms and experience working in complex multi-tenant environments with logical and physical separation requirements. With experience moving to cloud (AWS) the person will be able to identify opportunities to remove on premises infrastructure as well as optimize cloud delivery. They will need to be able to work on both a strategic and tactical level to ensure that the needs of the teams’ customers are met. With a focus on stability, monitoring and lifecycle management they need to be able to move the environments forward removing complexity and simplifying the environment whenever possible.

Essential Functions

• Manage a team of engineers focused on servers, storage, AWS and Microsoft technology delivery.
• Input into the strategic roadmaps and build and execute plans to deliver on the defined path, providing technical expertise and leadership to ensure goals are met consistently.
• Work closely with peers to ensure that the Systems team are effectively meeting the needs of both IT and business customers.
• Using key metrics be able to define capacity models, always looking ahead to avoid surprises
• Work with engineers to ensure that the team are following a defined and healthy process, finding process gaps, defining them quickly and transforming with customer success at the forefront of changes.
• Ensure that team members are always learning, growing, and have a clear roadmap on career progression through recognition, feedback, challenge and compensation.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement with consistent, efficient delivery
• Acting as a subject matter expert and source of escalation for issues within the team.
• Build and enable a culture where people are having fun as they make significant impacts on our business.

Competencies

• Creates and communicates the team’s goals, objectives and tracks performance against these objectives.
• Ensures organizational structure, career path and roles are clear and effective.
• A team player who likes to win consistently and who cares about the details when delivering on commitments
• Servant leader who consistently demonstrates and inspires his or her team(s) to live GR’s core values, take action and deliver results.
• Accountable and responsible for putting the organization in position to consistently, predictably and sustainably succeed.

Required or Preferred Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree required
• 7+ years working in large, complex infrastructure environments
• 2+ years managing systems engineering and administration
• Ability to effectively communicate technical issues and plans to senior executives and actively participate in business type discussions.
• Ability to translate high-level business strategy and goals into roadmaps, staffing, and budget plans.
• Proven management and communications skills (written, verbal and presentation) with demonstrated ability to create high-performing teams and business relationships.
• Outstanding leadership skills including mentoring, team building, motivation (self and other), and collaboration is essential.

Other Duties

• Direct reports can be people managers, team leads, etc
• Provide guidance, instruction and oversight at the team and organizational level
• Span of control, influence, responsibility and accountability is at the multi-team and organizational level.