Director, IT Operations

Position: Director, IT Operations

Position Type: Full-time, Permanent, Excluded, Internal/External

Location: Edmonton and Area

Pay Group: VII

Salary Range: $111,140 to $163,534

Closing Date: Open until Suitable Candidate Found

You're not just looking for your next role

• you're ready to lead transformation.

If you believe that operational excellence is built on trust, collaboration, and strategic foresight, then this is the opportunity you've been preparing for.

As our next Director of IT Operations, you'll bring calm to the chaos, vision to the roadmap, and heart to the team.

Let's build the future—secure, scalable, and resilient—together.

What you're passionate about

As a seasoned leader in information services and technology, you understand that calm, transparent, and empathetic communication across disciplines is the foundation for building consensus, inspiring confidence, and driving enthusiasm. You take pride in fostering a resilient, high-performing operations team—one that thrives on collaboration and delivers secure, scalable, and reliable infrastructure and support services. Your leadership style is rooted in trust, clarity, and a commitment to service excellence, enabling long-term progress and operational stability. You champion a multidisciplinary approach, knowing that diverse perspectives fuel innovation and elevate outcomes. You also recognize the transformative potential of AI and data-driven decision-making, leveraging advanced analytics to unlock new efficiencies and smarter solutions across the organization. By harnessing these tools, you empower your team to proactively address challenges, anticipate future needs, and continuously improve services. And above all, you recognize that great results come from great teams—so you make it a priority to surround yourself with the very best.

Responsibilities of the Director, IT Operations

People Leadership & Team Development

• Lead with empathy and discipline, focusing on team engagement, skill development, succession planning, and recognition.
• Champion cross-training and knowledge-sharing to build resilience and reduce single points of failure.
• Motivate and mentor staff, cultivating a culture of trust, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Operational Excellence

• Ensure service ownership, clear delivery expectations, and high standards for performance, reliability, and security.
• Define and monitor shared service metrics, driving continuous improvement and operational discipline.
• Oversee the management of infrastructure, service desk, and technical support teams, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.

Strategic Planning & Modernization

• Align infrastructure and operations with long-term organizational objectives, anticipating future needs and supporting transformation initiatives.
• Participate in multi-year planning, collaborating with other technology leaders, other key stakeholders and clients to ensure readiness for change and scalability.
• Support modernization efforts by simplifying processes, reducing technical debt, and enabling sustainable delivery. In addition, prioritize the integration of artificial intelligence and data-driven solutions to enhance decision-making, automate routine tasks, and unlock new efficiencies.

Risk & Capacity Management

• Maintain visibility into team capacity, skillsets, and risks, proactively addressing gaps and dependencies.
• Lead efforts to simplify processes, reduce complexity, and ensure sustainable delivery.
• Ensure operational resilience through robust risk management and business continuity planning.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Facilitate coordinated decision-making, engaging with internal and external partners to deliver value and support transformation initiatives.
• Build strong relationships with vendors, industry partners, and stakeholders to augment internal capacity and drive innovation.

What you bring

• University degree with a minimum of five years directly related experience; or a certificate or diploma with a minimum of 10 years of directly related experience; or equivalent education and experience.
• Demonstrable success leading information services teams or business units.
• Project management, project or program delivery, operational and strategic planning, resource management, technology implementation, and information service support.
• High degree of interpersonal and organizational skills to ensure strategic and collaborative relationships are developed and maintained at all levels in the organization as well as with external vendors, internal stakeholders, clients, the Executive team and the APS Board of Directors.
• Strong leadership skills and experience leading teams in a technical environment.
• Strong ability to motivate, empower others and create a positive team culture.
• Ability to deal with conflicting issues, roadblocks, dependencies and change demonstrating superior negotiation and conflict resolution skills.
• Demonstrated ability to make decisions based on financial and economic analysis.
• Superior negotiation and conflict resolution skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; ability to analyze system requirements and to implement optimized solutions to address client needs.

Why choose APS

APS is made up of hard-working, respectful and talented people who understand and invite diversity to the workplace. We take pride in holding ourselves accountable and continuing to meet or exceed service levels for plan members, pensioners and employers. We ensure they receive quality services because they—along with our people—are the reason we endure and succeed.

And it sure feels good helping hard-working Albertans receive their well-deserved pensions.

What APS has to offer

• Defined benefit pension plan
• Community-minded workplace with a friendly team environment
• Vacation starting at 20 days per year, 13 statutory holidays, personal days, plus office closure between Christmas and New Year's Day
• Competitive benefit package featuring extended health and dental benefits and a 100% employer-paid flexible spending account
• In-house training programs, extensive career development and coaching program, access to external education opportunities and wellness programs
• Discount programs through various partner agencies