SME - AIOPS, Automation, Tools, Observability

Role summary

The Automation, Observability & AIOps CoE Head leads the Center of Excellence responsible for automation, monitoring/observability, and AIOps solutions across all service lines. This role owns the portfolio, GTM offerings, and delivery frameworks, builds skills and capacity, supports sales/pre?sales and partner ecosystems, and provides senior technical leadership for complex transformations and red accounts in the automation/observability/AIOps domain.

Key responsibilities

1. CoE strategy, portfolio, and operating model

• Define and maintain the Automation, Observability & AIOps CoE charter and roadmap, aligned with the IS CoE themes: capacity/capability building, GTM offerings, pre?sales, partner management, executing transformation, frameworks/models, delivery excellence, EN opportunities, and red account support.
• Own the services portfolio for monitoring/observability platforms, ITOM/AIOps, operations automation (runbooks, workflows), and toolchains used across infrastructure, cloud, and application towers.

2. Capacity and capability building

• Build skills and capacity in key technology areas: observability platforms (APM, metrics, logs, traces), ITOM/AIOps tools, automation/orchestration (scripts, workflows, IaC), and SRE/operations practices.
• Design and run structured learning paths, certification tracks, labs, and communities of practice for engineers and architects involved in automation and observability.

3. GTM offerings and sales/pre?sales support

• Create and maintain packaged GTM offerings for:
  • observability platform implementation and modernization,
  • AIOps?driven event management and noise reduction,
  • operations automation (runbook automation, CI/CD/ITOM integrations),
  • SRE and reliability consulting.
• Lead solution design for strategic deals involving AIOps/observability/automation, working with sales and pre?sales to craft architectures, demos, effort/cost models, and differentiation; support RFP/RFI responses and customer workshops.

4. Frameworks, models, and delivery excellence

• Develop standard frameworks and reference architectures for:
  • enterprise observability (instrumentation, telemetry pipelines, data lake, dashboards),
  • AIOps use cases (correlation, anomaly detection, RCA, predictive analytics),
  • automation patterns (workflow catalogs, runbooks, IaC blueprints).
• Define delivery models and accelerators (implementation playbooks, standard configurations, reusable scripts) and govern adherence to ensure delivery excellence across accounts.

5. Executing transformation and EN opportunities

• Provide senior architecture and advisory leadership to large transformation programmes where observability, AIOps, and automation are central (e.g., platform modernization, SRE uplift, tool consolidation).
• Identify and drive EN (expansion/new) opportunities across existing accounts by proposing AIOps/automation/observability enhancements that reduce MTTR, improve reliability, and lower operations cost.

6. Red account and escalation support

• Act as escalation point and chief architect for “red” accounts where observability or automation issues are impacting SLAs or customer satisfaction.
• Lead root?cause and improvement programmes, redesigning monitoring and event management, tuning AIOps, and introducing automation to stabilise operations and restore customer confidence.

7. Partner ecosystem and joint solutions

• Manage strategic relationships with observability and AIOps vendors (e.g., Dynatrace, New Relic, AppDynamics, Splunk, ServiceNow ITOM, Elastic/Grafana, OpsRamp, etc.) and cloud providers’ native tools.
• Co?create joint offerings and reference architectures with partners, ensure access to training and best practices, and coordinate co?marketing/POCs where needed.

8. Governance, metrics, and evangelisation

• Define and track CoE KPIs: automation adoption rate, percentage of events auto?resolved, alert noise reduction, MTTR improvements, tool standardisation, certification levels, and red?account recovery metrics.
• Evangelise automation, observability and AIOps internally and externally via whitepapers, case studies, webinars, and conference talks, positioning the service provider as a leader in AI?powered operations.

Required skills and experience

• Experience
  • Typically 10-15+ years in IT operations, infrastructure or DevOps/SRE roles, with 5+ years in architecture/leadership focused on monitoring, automation, or AIOps.
  • Proven experience in service provider/MSP environments, shaping and delivering automation/observability/AIOps solutions for multiple customers.
• Technical competencies
  • Strong hands?on background with observability platforms (APM, metrics, logs, traces) and AIOps/ITOM tools, plus integration with ITSM/CMDB.
  • Experience designing and implementing automation architectures (runbook automation, workflow orchestration, scripting, IaC, CI/CD integration).
  • Good knowledge of cloud and container platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP/Kubernetes) and their native monitoring/automation services.
• Commercial and leadership skills
  • Strong presales and solutioning skills for tool and services deals; able to build business cases showing value from AIOps/automation (MTTR reduction, cost per ticket, FTE savings).
  • Excellent stakeholder management and communication across sales, delivery, customers, and partners; ability to lead multi?disciplinary teams and influence senior leadership.

Education and certifications (indicative)

• Bachelor’s/Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, IT or related fields.
• Relevant certifications such as:
  • Vendor observability/AIOps certs (Dynatrace, Splunk, New Relic, ServiceNow ITOM, etc.),
  • Cloud architect or DevOps/SRE certifications (AWS/Azure/GCP),
  • ITIL/ITSM for process alignment