Supervisor - IT (m/w/d)

Job Description

The key objective of this position is to oversee and continuously improve upon IT operations while maintaining production uptime. The Manufacturing Service Desk Supervisor is considered to be the face of IT to Manufacturing. This position manages second level support functions by working with a local and remote staff. The supervisor manages people, processes, and vendor partnerships, and ensures that policies and procedures are executed properly. They also adhere to metrics on KPI's set by management to provide baselines for meeting business targets. They are required to work with global team leaders to meet and exceed business support targets. They are expected to work with management and other support teams within First Solar to build a world class support organization.

The position includes 24/7 supervision of the manufacturing support team. This requires a flexible schedule as well as a strong focus on key business targets such as production safety, quality, uptime, and throughput. The supervisor is responsible for adhering to the existing global Manufacturing Service Desk standards as well as documenting new processes and distributing globally. Also must ensure that all policies and procedures are executed properly by coordinating with vendors both on and off-site and collaborating with other manufacturing teams to maintain a secure, productive manufacturing environment.

Education/Experience

• Minimum 6 years of related work experience
• 3 - 6 years of team lead or supervisory experience or 1 year of management experience
• Experience with ITSM tools (e.g. Remedy, ServiceNow, and Splunk ITSI)
• Experience in managing budgets and familiarity with procurement processes a plus
• 2+ years of experience in a role requiring interaction with leadership is a plus
• 2+ years of experience in IT manufacturing support
• Bachelor's degree in IT or related field or equivalent years of work experience
• Ability to consult, advise and support top customers at all levels of the organization while maintaining a calm and professional demeanor.
• Experience managing a distributed global workforce utilizing modern technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain relationships and collaborate cross-functionally with internal stakeholders.
• IT experience including project management, corporate user support, manufacturing support, business analysis, and application support over a full system life cycle.

Required Skills/Competencies

• Team-oriented leader with the ability to hire, manage, and develop the team through cross-functional participation, establishment of trust, agility, collaboration, and communication.
• Possess a strong sense of accountability and the ability to execute successfully in a complex and fast changing environment.
• Proven ability to resolve problems in a timely and proactive manner.
• Well-developed interpersonal and communication skills, both verbal and written, including the ability to communicate effectively with a diverse range of people and ability to write clearly for various target audiences, including senior executives.
• Proven ability to plan, prioritize and organize high quality work for self and others to meet tight deadlines in an everchanging environment.
• Experience in providing leadership in a team environment and being able to motivate, develop and manage a global team.

Essential Responsibilities

• Manage a staff of IT professionals, both solid and dotted line responsibility, to support the ongoing health of IT relationships and accomplish goals. Hire and train new staff, conduct performance reviews, and provide leadership and coaching, including technical and personal development programs for team members.
• Meets with key global IT and MES stakeholders as a strategic business partner to identify unmet needs and process improvements to be implemented by the ITSM team.
• Accountable for monitoring, reporting, and executing adherence to SLA's, policies and procedures.
• Regularly review any updated policies from the ESA team and ensure all changes are approved and deployed, including requisite training of all impacted parties and stakeholders.
• Responsible for server maintenance and migrations as required per guidance from server admins.
• Identify and resolve issues within software by following existing documentation and updating or creating new documentation as needed.
• Communicate safety moments to the team and lead by example through following all EHS safety policies and guidelines.
• Maintain backup schedule for all PCs and VDI on the production floor.
• Routinely spot-check hardware on the floor as well as spares as preventative maintenance.
• Procure production infrastructure software/hardware while remaining within budget guidelines.
• Ensure rapid response times to any outages or near-outages on the production floor.
• Deliver operational metrics such as SLA and present any activities of significance to upper management.
• Regularly perform security checks on the production floor including but not limited to verifying that the IDFs are secured, no unauthorized USB devices, replacing damaged hardware, etc.
• Collaborate with other manufacturing and IT teams and escalate issues as necessary.
• Build and maintain relationships with global counterparts to facilitate support.
• Executes other duties as assigned.
• Reviews information systems for compliance with legislation and specifies any required changes. Responsible for ensuring compliance with organizational policies and procedures and overall information management strategy.
• Takes responsibility for understanding client requirements, collecting data, delivering analysis and problem resolution. Identifies, evaluates and recommends options, implementing if required. Collaborates with, and facilitates stakeholder groups, as part of formal or informal consultancy agreements. Seeks to fully address client needs, enhancing the capabilities and effectiveness of client personnel, by ensuring that proposed solutions are properly understood and appropriately exploited.
• Sets direction and leads in the introduction and use of techniques, methodologies and tools, to match overall business requirements (both current and future), ensuring consistency across all user groups.
• Conducts business impact assessment to identify how the changes from the "as-is" processes, systems, and structures to the "to-be" processes, systems and structures impact specific organizations and roles. Outlines how the organization structure, jobs, teams and roles need to change to enable the future business processes. Aligns existing jobs/organizational structures to new processes.
• Develops and maintains one or more defined communication channels and/or stakeholder groups, acting as a single point of contact. Gathers information from the customer to understand their needs (demand management) and detailed requirements. Facilitates open communication and discussion between stakeholders, using feedback to assess and promote understanding of need for future changes in services, products, and systems. Agrees changes to be made and the planning and implementation of change. Maintains contact with the customer and stakeholders throughout to ensure satisfaction. Captures and disseminates technical and business information.
• Conducts job analyses, prepares job descriptions and person specifications, and prepares selection and evaluation criteria for candidates. Manages recruitment campaigns. Locates and selects possible agencies and other suppliers, negotiating terms and conditions, and placing orders with them, ensuring that all obligations are met in accordance with the agreed terms and timescales. Reviews candidate details, manages selection processes, and ensures that account is taken of relevant statutory or external regulations, standards and codes of good practice. Ensures that all relevant parties are informed of the results of interviews and other decisions, and assists in the negotiation of terms and conditions of service.
• Determines the required outcomes for learning or development, from organizational development needs and the training strategy. Mentors assigned practitioners, ensuring alignment with predetermined statements of required development outcomes. Assists each practitioner with the creation of development plans based on the outcome statements. Ensures that each practitioner records evidence of progress. Validates practitioners' records at the end of each cycle of planned development, to ensure that achievements and enhanced capabilities are recorded and referenced to the outcome statements. May contribute to practitioners' performance appraisals.
• Organizes requirements into appropriate categories. Advises on different procurement routes to acquire services and products. Gathers information and uses appropriate techniques to assess benefits and options and make decisions about the most appropriate route of procurement e.g., open market or collaborative framework. Uses knowledge of supplier markets to inform specifications. Evaluates and selects suppliers based on the specification and evaluation criteria. Adapts terms and conditions to reflect the scale of the requirement and encourage good performance. Collects and collates data to support collaboration.
• Acts as the routine contact point between organization and supplier. Collects and reports on supplier performance data.
• Oversees the organization's promotional/selling activities to one or more clients, to ensure that such activities are aligned with corporate marketing objectives. Approves medium-scale proposals to clients. Negotiates with client representatives at senior levels on both technical and commercial issues. Ensures that organizational policy and strategy is adhered to. Provides informed feedback that contributes to promotional strategy and to product development.

Reporting Relationships

• This position will report to Manager I - IT

Travel

• 0-5%, as needed.
• If hired during plant start up, you will be expected to travel to other First Solar locations for training.

Estimated Salary Range

• 67,400 - 96,000, Annually

US Physical Requirements

Office Physical Requirements:

All positions in our office require interaction with people and technology while either standing or sitting. To best service our customers, internal and external, all associates must be able to communicate face-to-face and on the phone with or without reasonable accommodation. First Solar is committed to compliance with its obligations under all applicable state and federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. In keeping with this commitment, it attempts to reasonably accommodate applicants and employees in accordance with the requirements of the disability discrimination laws. It also invites individuals with disabilities to participate in a good faith, interactive process to identify reasonable accommodation that can be made without imposing an undue hardship.

Potential candidates will meet the education and experience requirements provided on the above job description and excel in completing the listed responsibilities for this role. All candidates receiving an offer of employment must successfully complete a background check and any other tests that may be required.

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement: First Solar is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values and respects the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce. It is the policy of the company to recruit, hire, train and promote persons in all job titles without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a driving force in the success of our company.