Senior Incident Manager

Job Description

As a Senior Incident Manager at Zendesk, you will respond to production incidents and coordinate engineering response efforts as they occur within your region. This includes coordinating all activities associated with the engineering Incident Management process. You will support teams across the organization, primarily Engineering, Product Development and Customer Advocacy, in responding to, investigating, managing and resolving product incidents. 

Core Responsibilities

• Be the Incident Commander driving response and resolution Severity 1 - 4 incidents

• Support the response for Severity 0 incidents

• Participate in on call rotation

• Drive down Median Time to Respond by analyzing response and driving improvements

• Drive data analysis to identify areas for improvement and underlying problems to support reliability improvements 

• Drive the identification of underlying problems and sheppard them through the Proactive Problem Management process

• Contribute to Incident Management reporting to ensure transparency to audiences across Zendesk

• Make sure our documentation and training remains up to date

• Provide Incident Management and Proactive Problem Management training across Zendesk

• Support Engineering teams root cause analysis

• Be a mentor to all Incident Managers

• Ensure the Incident Management process keeps up with current trends to remain best in class in our industry

Responsibilities During an Incident:

• Run and facilitate the incident response as the Incident Commander

• Respond to incidents as they occur within your region when on call or as needed

• Create and maintain incident documentation and data

• Coordinate incident response logistics

• Work with customer facing counterparts to ensure communications are detailed and timely

Following an Incident:

• Draft incident report and assign to appropriate parties

• Facilitate post mortem incident review forums which include a global audience

• Manage Remediation Item process including identification, ticket creation, tracking, follow up and reporting

• Facilitate prioritization of incident remediation items to ensure that identified open issues are resolved

• Consistently work to keep related remediation projects moving forward

• Drive more detailed root cause analysis for high severity incidents that cross engineering teams.

• Support immediate ongoing investigations and escalate on high risk discoveries

• Manage Root Cause Analysis process and provide details for reporting

• Ensure all incident details are accurate and fully documented across the incident report, tickets and system status dashboards

Other Areas of Responsibility:

• Contribute to weekly reporting to ensure transparency to various audiences across Zendesk

• Refine/Improve Incident processes to drive team towards SLO goals and to ensure repeatable customer experience

• Assist in Risk Assessment Activities

• Support and backup other Incident Managers

 What You Bring to the Role:

• BS/BA in relevant field or equivalent experience and a minimum of 5+ years of directly related experience in a SaaS or hosted application service provider environment

• Expert knowledge of Incident and Problem Management ITIL terms and practice

• Familiarity with overall ITIL terminology and practice

• Experience facilitating review of technical incidents, documenting actions, and encouraging cooperative problem solving

• Strong communication and business acumen and the ability to ensure a consistently high level of customer satisfaction

• Understanding of IT operational processes, software development paradigms, and common SaaS provider architecture

• Enthusiasm for working in a high paced environment while remaining analytical and detail-oriented

• Proactive, with excellent decision making skills and ability to identify, prioritize, and articulate the highest impact tasks

• Independently meet and own deliverables and drive your work to completion within specified timelines from start to finish

• Exceptional communication skills both written and verbal, with a strong attention to detail

• Collaborative, upbeat work ethic where you can take ownership and have fun

The US annualized base salary range for this position is $145,000.00-$217,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.