Is Manager

**The Opportunity**: The role of the IS Communications Manager is to manage all aspects of the Maple Leaf Foods IT Network Infrastructure. As a leader of this team, you will be providing technical and people leadership as well as accountability for its performance. You will work with a team of professionals to ensure the smooth operation of our LAN, WAN, SDWAN and Cisco Telephony infrastructure. You will lead a national team and be based out of our Mississauga office where you will ensure the efficient and effective support of our network while following defined processes and procedures. As part of your role you will be accountable for your team’s performance providing thought leadership, mentorship and guidance helping to shape the teams continued development and evolution.
**Snapshot of a Day-in-the-Life**: Technical Leadership:

- Setup/Participate in weekly touchpoints to assist in prioritizing open items (Permanent Fixes, Code changes)
- Maintain and present the monthly operational health check and KPIs for supported systems to senior leadership
- Manage on-call to support major incidents
- Establish full operational monitoring and reporting, with hand-off as appropriate to production support teams
- Provide recommendations for improvements in the delivery/operation/maintenance of service
- Provide capacity planning; Technology deployment architecture; Collaborator and approver of Network and Telephony high-level architecture; Direct/Assist on assessment/advisement/planning on all patches, bug-fixes, revisions, and upgrades
- Manage Service Levels and processes for the key deliverables within our mandate, including Incident, Problem, Change, Request and Release to Production
- May be required to work off-hours (depending on Major Incidents, critical/Emergency Changes etc.)
- Direct technology activities - striking a balance between improvements and production support activities
- Actively collaborate with information technology groups and partners to support organizational and IT objectives.
- Work closely with Architecture Team, Security Team, and Project Managers to ensure delivery of IT commitments
- Ensure production readiness as part implementation, and hand-off to production support teams
- Develop, implement, track, and assess KPIs for Network and Telephony services
- Evaluate/assess/estimate all Project demand requests
- Expert understanding of infrastructure technology solutions and vendor products across multiple solution domains e.g., servers’ components, network devices, storage server platforms, etc.
- Works closely with executive leadership to lead areas of 'business improvement priorities' areas including Purpose, Products, Profitability, People, Process, Partners, Plans, Performance.
- Monitor and manage SLAs/OLAs as appropriate and match delivery to agreement obligations.

**What You’ll Bring**: Technical skills, Education and Experience:

- University - bachelor’s degree or equivalent Or College Diploma in Information Technology
- Minimum of 5-10 years working in IT, with at least 2-3 years at some managerial level
- At least 2-3 years of experience in the Consumer-Packaged Goods or Manufacturing vertical sector would be beneficial
- Demonstrated experience/knowledge in Cisco Routers and Cisco Switches
- Knowledge in Voice Gateways/PRIs/SIP
- Demonstrated experience in building/managing WAN/LAN
- Knowledge in SD-WAN
- Strong knowledge of common IT organizational functions, inter-relations and dependencies.

People Leadership:

- Closely monitor progress of all team work, and manage all associated escalations
- Effective communication of all incidents and status for Network Operations to all stakeholders
- Execute all performance reviews, development plans, coaching, mentoring, time recording approval, and overall management of full-time staff
- Monitor, and manage all budgets for the Team, including but not limited to both capex projects as well opex communication/WAN and contract spending, with monthly checkpoints with our leadership and project management office providing monthly variance reporting and proactively adjust where required to ensure adherence to budget
- Manage day-to-day vendor relationships; Accurate tracking of vendor activities: track payments to vendor monthly; Provide support for successful negotiation of contract renewals with vendors in your portfolio; Track license agreements and license usage for vendors in your portfolio;
- Experience in managing a complete Project Life Cycle process including but not limited to project; Request-Discovery
- Planning-Delivery and Closure milestones.
- Strong knowledge and understanding of Project Management, ITIL, ITSM and SDLC methodologies and processes.
- Strong, and effective communication skills a must
- Strong presentation skills, with matching analytical and problem-solving capabilities

**What We Offer at Maple Leaf Foods**:

- Being part of a high-performance, people-focused company that has an inspiring and u