DevOps Engineering Manager

DevOps Manager

The DevOps Manager will lead the DevOps function and drive the evolution of our infrastructure, automation, and deployment practices to support rapid, reliable product delivery. This role is responsible for overseeing a team of DevOps engineers and architects while working closely with Engineering, Security, and IT to design and operate scalable, secure, and highly available systems. The DevOps Manager will create and execute a strategic DevOps roadmap aligned with business and engineering objectives, assess the viability of current platforms and processes, and recommend improvements to meet both current and future needs. This role includes people leadership, technical oversight, and operational stewardship, with accountability for DevSecOps practices, system reliability, cost optimization, and compliance.

Essential Responsibilities

• Communicate effectively with all levels of the organization by:
• Managing customer and expectations; facilitating, planning and meetings; translating customer expectations for staff and peers; representing Highmark with outside entities.
• Preparing written procedures, policies, reports and correspondence; collaborating and negotiating with departments corporate wide.
• Collaborating with company customers, staff, IT colleagues, and other stakeholders in identifying customer requirements, assessing impacts to other areas, considering available options, comparing costs and benefits, and recommending solutions.
• Management Consulting
• Identify issues and recommend solutions.
• Create presentation and present concept to clients, tailoring presentation to audiences of varies levels, subject knowledge and size.
• Implement recommendations/solutions and ensure client receives the necessary assistance to carry out solutions.
• Liaising with clients to keep them informed of progress and to make relevant decisions.
• Advise clients on options, risks, cost vs benefit, impact on other business processes and system priorities.
• Ensure continuous improvement of processes and delivery of results within assigned unit/area.
• Organize, direct and coordinate cross-functional activities including staff not under direct managerial control.
• Encourage innovation and focus resources to ensure successful delivery of desired results.
• Apply quantitative risk assessment to team's assignments to understand potential threats and the probability they will occur.
• Lead team in mitigating risks and applying appropriate contingency plans to ensure minimal impacts to customers.
• Provide leadership to the organization to respond to business opportunities/challenges, new technologies, legislation and other environmental factors.
• Oversee analysis of issues or needs and review recommended solutions.
• Assess the impact of strategic business and technical changes on the environment.
• Responsible for managing all activities within an assigned business unit/area.
• Foresee organizational impacts and understand the procedures associated with introducing new technologies, while seeking ways to collaborate with other teams outside area of responsibility to facilitate transitions.
• Optimize the utilization of resources by applying appropriate concepts, technologies and workflows
• Ability to accept direction and provide leadership to develop/maintain a high-performance work team.
• Respond to feedback and champion process improvement initiatives by empowering their team to deliver quality services/products to internal and external customers.
• Implement solutions that are consistent with Highmark's strategic direction.
• Keep abreast of current industry standards and trends.
• Staff Management accountabilities to include but not limited to:
• Developing and providing input to skills assessment and oversee personal development plans as it relates to career development.
• Coaching, managing and developing employees by establishing clear goals, expectations, and strategies for employee performance.
• Develop and administer performance reviews with measurable goals.
• Provide opportunities for staff to maintain current industry knowledge.
• Provide opportunities for employees to build collaborative relationships with customers.
• Departmental Management planning and administrative accountabilities to include, but not limited to:
• Departmental budgeting and fiscal responsibilities.
• Manage teams that span geographic areas or functional areas.
• Ensure compliance with corporate standards, policies and regulations (SOX, SSP, DIACAP, PHPLC, etc.).
• Establish and use metrics as a tool to benchmark and improve operational excellence
• Develop and implement short-term and long-term departmental plans.
• Consult and evaluate vendor solutions where appropriate.

Other duties as assigned or requested.

Education

• Required: Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, Management Information Systems, Computer Science or closely related discipline
• Substitutions: None
• Preferred: Master's Degree in Information Technology, Management Information Systems, Computer Science or closely related discipline

Experience

• Required: 5 years in a leadership / mentoring role
• 5 years of planning, implementing, maintaining and growing capabilities within relevant discipline
• 3 years of developing, communicating and presenting concepts to varying audience
• Preferred: 5+ years in a leadership / mentoring role including leading engineers/architects in complex, hybrid on-prem and cloud environments
• Management experience in: employee development plans, performance evaluations, goals development
• Experience in budget administration and process improvement
• Knowledge and experience in developing strategic plans
• Demonstrated competency in the execution of multiple projects, including managing resources across multiple projects to meet goals

Licenses or Certifications

• Required: None
• Preferred: None

Skills

• Knowledge of company's business practices and direction as well as familiarity with the company's products and resources
• Knowledge of the assigned business unit/area's direction and practices
• This position is required to comply with all Highmark Corporate Policies and IT Procedures, Standards and Strategies
• Demonstrated ability to own vendor relationships for key DevOps platforms (e.g. GitLab, JFrog Artifactory), including regular touchpoint, roadmap reviews, and escalation management.
• Proven team leadership and mentoring experience, including setting technical direction, prioritizing work (Gitlab Plan), and coaching DevOps Engineers and Architects.
• Deep hands-on expertise with GitLab CI/CD for pipeline design, merge-request workflows, security/scanning integration, and release orchestration.
• Expertise in JFrog Artifactory and related tooling (e.g., Curation, XRay) for artifact lifecycle management, repository strategy, security scanning, and software supply-chain governance.
• Operational and architectural experience with containerization and orchestration (OpenShift, Docker, Kubernetes).
• Expertise in Ansible (or equivalent configuration-management/IaC tooling) to provision, configure, and maintain infrastructure consistently.
• Strong scripting skills (Python, YAML, Bash/Shell or similar) for CI/CD pipeline logic, internal tooling, and automation of build, test, deployment, and operational tasks.
• Solid understanding of DevSecOps practices, including embedding SAST/SCA/container scanning into CI/CD pipelines and enforcing consistent security controls.
• Demonstrated ability to design and manage end-to-end CI/CD pipelines that connect source control, artifact management, automated testing, security gates, and deployment across multiple environments.
• Deep understanding of networking, security best practices, and system architecture.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Solid understanding of networking concepts and protocols, security best practices, and system administration.
• Strong understanding of security principles and best practices.
• Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to communicate core DevOps concepts (CI/CD, SAFe Agile & Automation)
• Background in high-availability, distributed systems.
• Experience in scaling SaaS platforms.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, etc.).
• Experience managing multi-region or global infrastructure.

Language (Other than English): None

Travel Requirement: 0% - 25%

Physical, Mental Demands and Working Conditions

• Position Type: Office-based
• Teaches / trains others regularly: Occasionally
• Travel regularly from the office to various work sites or from site-to-site: Occasionally
• Works primarily out-of-the