Sr. Manager Process Automation & Decision Support

Job Description Summary:

Role Summary
The Sr. Manager, Process, Automation & Decision Support leads the process excellence, portfolio governance, information management, and decision-support function within Infrastructure Operations & Architecture (IO&A). This role sits between Technology Operations and Technology Architecture, Design & Delivery, ensuring operational execution, improvement opportunities, portfolio commitments, and leadership decisions are visible, data-informed, and actively managed.
This role serves as the portfolio manager for IO&A by maintaining the overall ledger of work across active initiatives, backlog demand, operational improvement actions, leadership assignments, decisions, risks, and accountabilities. The Sr. Manager ensures the IO&A portfolio is accurately represented in Asana, that work ownership and standards are clear, and that status visibility is reliable enough to support executive decision-making.
The role also owns the data-driven continuous improvement engine for IO&A. By leveraging ServiceNow incident, request, change, and problem data, this leader and the Infrastructure Analysts identify operational patterns, recurring friction, automation candidates, tooling gaps, partner performance trends, and opportunities to simplify service delivery. The team partners closely with Technology Operations to measure the Managed Services Partner against defined KPIs and with Architecture, Design & Delivery to ensure improvement opportunities and delivery commitments remain aligned to IO&A standards, priorities, and transformation objectives.
Purpose
Create disciplined visibility, decision support, and continuous improvement capability for IO&A by maintaining the system-of-record portfolio, analyzing operational performance, improving processes, extending tooling, and delivering automation and AI-enabled workflows that improve service quality, efficiency, accountability, and management confidence.
Mission
Provide the operating rhythm, data discipline, process governance, automation leadership, and portfolio transparency required for IO&A to scale through a managed services model while retaining internal accountability for standards, work prioritization, performance insight, continuous improvement, and decision quality.

Job Description:

Key Responsibilities

1) Serve as IO&A Accountability Leader

• Maintain the IO&A operating ledger of decisions, actions, assignments, commitments, owners, due dates, risks, dependencies, and follow-through expectations.

• Ensure leadership assignments and accountabilities are captured, appropriately attributed, actively managed, and visible through standard operating cadences.

• Drive management discipline across recurring leadership forums by preparing agendas, decision materials, action logs, and follow-up tracking that turn conversations into accountable outcomes.

2) Own IO&A Portfolio Governance and Asana Record Quality

• Own the accuracy, structure, hygiene, and standards of the IO&A portfolio in Asana, ensuring active work, backlog items, milestones, owners, dependencies, risks, and status updates are current and decision-ready.

• Define and enforce portfolio data standards, intake expectations, status-reporting norms, taxonomy, ownership rules, and archival practices for IO&A work management.

• Maintain visibility across both project-based and operational improvement work so leadership can understand capacity, priority conflicts, aging backlog, delivery risk, and enterprise-impacting dependencies.

3) Lead Information Management and Decision Support

• Establish a consistent IO&A information-management model for artifacts, operating reports, dashboards, meeting outputs, action registers, decision logs, and performance narratives.

• Translate portfolio and operational data into concise leadership insights, recommendations, scenarios, and decision packages for IO&A leadership, Technology peers, Finance, HR, PMO, and executive stakeholders.

• Ensure decision records, assumptions, approvals, open risks, and follow-up actions are retained in the appropriate system of record and remain accessible for governance, auditability, and continuity.

4) Drive Operational Performance Analytics Using ServiceNow Data

• Lead analysis of ServiceNow incident, request, change, and problem trends to identify macro-level trends and patterns; recurring demand drivers, bottlenecks, aging work, handoff friction, reopen/rework patterns, SLA/KPI concerns, and service-tower performance issues.

• Leverage the Infrastructure Analysts to produce recurring operational insights, trend narratives, root-cause themes, backlog analysis, and improvement recommendations for Technology Operations and IO&A leadership.

• Develop and maintain reporting views that connect operational performance to user impact, service reliability, partner performance, automation value, risk reduction, and continuous improvement outcomes.

5) Own Process Improvement and Continuous Improvement Portfolio

• Maintain the IO&A continuous improvement backlog and ensure opportunities are assessed, prioritized, assigned, measured, and progressed through a transparent lifecycle.

• Use Lean, Six Sigma, ITIL, value-stream, and service-management practices to identify waste, reduce process friction, simplify workflows, clarify handoffs, and improve service consistency.

• Partner with Technology Operations, Architecture, PMO, ServiceNow owners, cybersecurity/risk, and the Managed Services Partner to convert operational patterns into measurable improvement plans.

6) Lead Tooling Effectiveness, Workflow Automation, and AI Enablement

• Evaluate whether existing tools, workflows, dashboards, integrations, reports, and automation capabilities are producing the intended operational outcomes and recommend changes where gaps exist.

• Identify opportunities to extend existing tooling, especially ServiceNow, Asana, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, reporting tools, and approved automation platforms, to simplify and expedite IO&A service delivery.

• Stay current on AI, automation, agentic workflow, AIOps, analytics, and productivity capabilities; deliver practical agents, workflows, dashboards, and automation patterns where they are approved, supportable, measurable, and aligned to Focus standards.

7) Partner with Technology Operations on Managed Services Partner Performance

• Partner with Technology Operations to define, measure, and interpret Managed Services Partner performance across SLA/KPI compliance, backlog aging, ticket quality, change success, runbook adherence, automation impact, escalation quality, and continuous improvement commitments.

• Maintain partner-performance scorecards and improvement-action tracking that convert operational data into clear recommendations, corrective actions, and QBR-ready insight.

• Ensure improvement opportunities identified by the partner or internal teams are documented, prioritized, governed, and measured rather than remaining informal observations.

8) Support Governance, Standards, and Operating Cadence Across IO&A

• Ensure IO&A operating cadences have clear inputs, outputs, decisions, owners, follow-up mechanisms, and measurable outcomes.

• Maintain alignment with ServiceNow workflows, Change Management, CAB expectations, ARB/TRM guardrails, PMO practices, and internal reporting standards without duplicating the execution responsibilities of Technology Operations or Architecture.

• Create transparency across operational health, service maturity, portfolio delivery, continuous improvement, partner performance, and automation value so leadership can manage proactively.

9) Lead Infrastructure Analysts and Build Data-Driven Operating Maturity

• Directly manage the Infrastructure Analysts responsible for data extraction, analysis, reporting, dashboard support, process mapping, backlog tracking, and operational insight generation.

• Set analytical standards for accuracy, reproducibility, clear assumptions, data-source lineage, and executive-ready presentation of findings.

• Develop the analysts as a shared capability that improves IO&A’s ability to measure performance, identify patterns, test hypotheses, and recommend practical improvements.

Leadership Expectations (How this role operates)

• Operate as IO&A’s Accountability Leader. Create visibility, structure, follow-through, and decision support without becoming an administrative bottleneck or replacing functional ownership.

• Improve how work flows, not just how work is reported. Use data, process discipline, and tooling to reduce friction, clarify accountabilities, and make service delivery easier to execute and govern.

• Protect system-of-record integrity. Ensure Asana and ServiceNow are reliable sources of truth for portfolio and operational data; avoid parallel ledgers, shadow tracking, and informal work queues where formal records are required.

• Lead through insight and influence. Use analysis, pattern recognition, and practical recommendations to drive improvement across Technology Operations, Architecture, PMO, partner teams, and service owners.

• Balance governance with practicality. Create enough structure to improve accountability and decision quality without adding unnecessary bureaucracy or slowing execution.

• Make automation measurable. Ensure automations, AI agents, workflows, dashboards, and tooling enhancements have defined purposes, owners, controls, adoption expectations, and measurable outcomes.

• Connect performance to business value. Frame operational performance in terms of reliability, productivity, risk reduction, stakeholder confidence, service quality, and the value of the managed services transformation.

Key Deliverables

• IO&A operating ledger covering decisions, leadership assignments, action items, accountabilities, due dates, dependencies, risks, and follow-up status.

• IO&A portfolio governance model for Asana, including intake standards, portfolio taxonomy, status-reporting expectations, ownership rules, backlog hygiene, milestone standards, and quality controls.

• Recurring IO&A leadership decision-support package summarizing portfolio progress, backlog trends, operational performance, CI opportunities, risks, dependencies, and required decisions.

• ServiceNow operational performance model with dashboards and reporting for incidents, requests, changes, problems, SLA/KPI trends, backlog aging, reopen/rework, change success, problem themes, tower performance, and improvement opportunities.

• Continuous improvement backlog and prioritization model linking operational data patterns to process changes, tooling enhancements, automation candidates, and measurable outcomes.

• Managed Services Partner performance scorecard and improvement-action register supporting weekly/monthly governance, QBR inputs, KPI measurement, and corrective action tracking.

• Automation and AI enablement roadmap identifying approved agents, workflows, reports, dashboards, integrations, and tooling enhancements with measurable value and ownership.

• Standard operating cadence artifacts, including agenda templates, decision logs, action logs, report standards, metric definitions, and executive-ready views of IO&A performance and delivery health.

Required Qualifications

• Experience leading process improvement, portfolio governance, program management, IT operations management, business operations, or decision-support functions within enterprise technology environments.

• Demonstrated ability to manage complex portfolios of work across backlog, active initiatives, operational improvement actions, dependencies, risks, milestones, and executive reporting cadences.

• Strong working knowledge of ITSM practices and ServiceNow data across incident, request, change, problem, SLA/KPI management, operational dashboards, and service reporting.

• Experience using project and portfolio management tools, preferably Asana or comparable platforms, to maintain system-of-record quality, portfolio standards, ownership clarity, and leadership visibility.

• Demonstrated ability to analyze operational data, identify systemic patterns, develop recommendations, and translate findings into practical process, tooling, automation, or governance improvements.

• Experience partnering with managed services providers, service delivery leaders, PMO, architecture, cybersecurity/risk, Finance, and business stakeholders to drive accountability and continuous improvement.

• Strong executive communication skills with ability to turn complex operational and portfolio data into concise, actionable insights, dashboards, narratives, and decision packages.

• People leadership experience managing analysts, program managers, process owners, business operations resources, or similar decision-support roles.

Preferred Qualifications

• Project/program management experience with formal training or certification such as PMP, PgMP, Agile/Scrum, or comparable delivery governance background.

• ITIL Foundation or equivalent practical experience with service management processes, continual improvement, SLA/KPI governance, problem management, change management, and service reporting.

• Formal Lean, Six Sigma, value-stream mapping, process mining, business process management, or operational excellence training.

• Experience building or transforming a retained technology organization that governs managed services execution while preserving internal accountability for standards, decisions, performance, and continuous improvement.

• Experience with ServiceNow reporting, Performance Analytics, dashboards, CMDB-adjacent operating data, catalog/workflow improvement, or ITSM process design.

• Experience with Asana portfolio management, Microsoft Power Platform, Power BI, Copilot/AI agents, workflow automation, reporting automation, or analytics-enabled operating models.

• Financial management experience including run-rate tracking, business cases, productivity measurement, cost avoidance, efficiency reporting, vendor performance economics, and value realization.

• Experience operating in regulated or audit-sensitive environments requiring strong documentation, data quality, change discipline, decision records, and governance traceability.

This position is an exempt position. The annualized base pay range for this role is expected to be between $150,000-$160,000 base salary compensation range. Actual base pay may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, experience, subject matter expertise, geographic location where work will be performed, and the applicant’s skill set. The base pay is just one component of the total compensation package. Other rewards may include an annual cash bonus and a comprehensive benefits package, including but not limited to medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and 401(k). Please note that the job title is subject to change based on the selected candidate’s experience and education.

Focus is a leading financial services firm comprised of integrated wealth management, family office, and business management services. Blending deep expertise and expansive resources with a boutique, client-first fiduciary philosophy, Focus helps individuals, families, and institutions navigate complex financial situations with highly personalized solutions tailored to their unique needs. To learn more about Focus, visit www.focusfinancialpartners.com or follow the company on LinkedIn.

EEO Statement: Focus is an equal opportunity employer and bases its employment decisions on the employee or candidate’s skillset, and without regard to an employee or candidate’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state and/or federal law.

Focus complies with federal and state disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact careers@focuspartners.com

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About Us

Focus, a business division of Focus Financial Partners, brings together businesses across Wealth, Business Management, Family Office, and International. Collectively, these firms—spanning the U.S., Canada, and Australia—deliver a broad spectrum of financial advice solutions to individuals, families, and institutions.

Our vision is clear: to be the leading fiduciary advice company in the world. For clients, that means an experience built around their needs. For advisors, it means access to the resources, tools, and capabilities typically available only at the largest global institutions.

We believe talent is the key to realizing this vision. That’s why we invest in our people, support their growth, and create meaningful opportunities for development at every stage of their careers.