NOC Manager

Job Summary :

Seeking a hands-on Network Operations Center (NOC) Manager to build and operate a centralized, global 24x7 NOC based in Hyderabad, India. This role reports to the VP of Operations and is accountable for establishing the people, processes, and performance required to support more than 50 global customer programs delivering transit fare collection and payment card processing services.

The NOC Manager will lead a team of approximately 4060 Tier 1 and Tier 2 NOC analysts operating around the clock, with defined escalation to Tier 3 engineering and regional field services teams. The role requires prior experience building or significantly maturing a 24x7 operations center and enforcing disciplined, repeatable operational practices aligned with ITIL 4, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS v4 operational monitoring expectations.

Responsibilities :

This is a build-and-operate leadership role responsible for end-to-end NOC effectiveness, including :

• Build and lead a centralized Hyderabad-based NOC organization (40 - 60 staff) with Tier 1 and Tier 2 roles and defined escalation to Tier 3 engineering and regional operations.

• Design and manage 24x7 shift coverage, staffing models, onboarding, training, coaching, and performance management.

• Establish and operate 24x7 monitoring and event management for networks, systems, cloud services, applications, and OT/edge devices supporting transit payments.

• Implement and enforce ITIL-aligned Incident Management, including triage, severity assignment, escalation, major incident coordination, communications, and post-incident review.

• Ensure continuous verification of operational controls including log management, monitoring coverage, backup success, recovery testing, change control discipline, and DR readiness.

• Ensure NOC operations support PCI DSS v4 monitoring requirements and are executed in a manner consistent with ISO 27001 operational control and evidence expectations.

• Lead operational response to emergent incidents, ensuring rapid containment, service restoration, and accurate executive and stakeholder communications.

• Define and maintain runbooks, SOPs, escalation matrices, and shift handover standards.

• Establish KPIs, dashboards, and reporting cadences; drive continual improvement through trend analysis and postmortems.

• Coordinate closely with Security Operations (SOC) for escalation of operational anomalies with potential security implications.

Essential Job Duties :

• Operate a 24x7 NOC covering monitoring, performance and capacity management, incident management, logging, change coordination, backup verification, and DR readiness.

• Ensure rapid identification, escalation, and resolution of outages and degradations affecting customer-facing payment and transit services.

• Lead major incident bridges and enforce structured communication and restoration validation.

• Ensure logging, monitoring, and telemetry failures are treated as operational risks and remediated with urgency.

• Produce and maintain incident records, reports, and operational evidence suitable for audit and compliance review.

General Duties and Responsibilities :

• Operate effectively under limited supervision in a high-availability, mission-critical environment.

• Demonstrate strong attention to detail and consistency in process execution and documentation.

• Communicate effectively in English, including written incident updates and executive level operational summaries.

• Motivate and lead teams across multiple shifts, fostering accountability and continuous improvement.

• Escalate issues appropriately while maintaining productive working relationships.

• Reliably demonstrate accountability for work assignments and proactive communications about issues and status. A strong history of proactively identifying effective solutions for challenges.

• Able to motivate activity to meet the needs, and adept at escalating in an effective manner that preserves relations.

• Able to reliably demonstrate ethical behavior and accurate communications even when complex factors are involved.

• Able to operate in a professional manner, even in crisis settings.

• Comply with Quality Management System.

• Comply with quality, health, safety, and security policies.

• Support the company's strategic objectives and collaborate across departments.

• Comply with Human Resources Procedures.

Skills / Experience / Knowledge :Essential :

• Proven experience building and leading a 24x7 NOC or equivalent mission-critical operations organization.

• Strong command of monitoring & event management and incident management, including major incident leadership.

• Experience operating hybrid environments including customer-site data centers and Azure and/or AWS cloud platforms.

• Demonstrated operational ownership of log management, backup verification, change/configuration control, and DR readiness.

• Experience working in regulated environments with strong audit and evidence requirements (PCI DSS, ISO 27001, SOC, etc.).

• Establishes operational objectives, policies, procedures and work plans and delegates assignments to subordinates.

• Develops, modifies and executes company policies that affect immediate operations and may also have company-wide effect. Accountable for department budget which may be broad and have far reaching impact on the business segment.

• Works on issues where analysis of situations or data requires conceptual thinking and an in-depth knowledge of organizational objectives. Problems are not clearly defined and may lack strategic direction. Implements policies and selects methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for obtaining results. Drives the strategy and success of larger projects which contribute to multiple areas of the organization.

• Interacts regularly with lower and/or senior management on matters concerning multiple functional areas, department, and/or customers.

• Requires the ability to persuade others in sensitive complex situations while preserving relationships. Applies knowledge to convince other stakeholders on desired departmental outcomes.

• This position must be able to create networks involving coordination among groups and provide thought leadership to pursue organization projects. This will require understanding of wider business and conveying advanced information and persuading several diverse stakeholders or audiences. The position must be recognized internally as a subject matter expert and will direct the activities of others.

• Demonstrated competency in strategic thinking and leadership with strong abilities in relationship management.

Desirable :

• Experienced in operations supporting payments or high-volume transaction processing operations experience.

• Experience monitoring Operational Technology (OT) or distributed edge device ecosystems.

• Experience integrating monitoring platforms with ITSM tools (e.g., ServiceNow).

• ITIL 4 Foundation or equivalent operational practice experience.

Qualifications :Essential :

• 12 - 15+ years of experience in mission-critical IT or service operations, including people leadership in a 24x7 model.

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.

Desirable :

• Formal ITIL, ISO 27001, or operations management certifications.