Key Tech Jobs in Illinois (NOW HIRING)

Antares Capital is seeking a Vice President, Solutions Architect - Technology Operations & Service Delivery to lead and evolve our Production Support Organization, spanning Level 1 and Level 2 operations. This is a strategic, hands‑on leadership role responsible for ensuring the reliability, stability, and performance of our technology platforms while building a world‑class operational structure driven by automation, data, and continuous improvement. You will own the end‑to‑end health of our production ecosystem — partnering with Engineering, Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and Business stakeholders to ensure our systems are resilient, observable, and scalable. You will establish strong KPI frameworks, drive automation‑first thinking, manage third‑party vendor relationships, and act as the command center during incidents and outages. This role is ideal for a leader who excels at translating operational discipline into strategic execution plans and seeing them through to closure.

• L1 & L2 Production Support Leadership: Build, lead, and mature both L1 and L2 support teams, establishing clear escalation paths, ownership accountability, and a high‑performance service culture.
• Own end‑to‑end incident monitoring, triage, and resolution across all production environments.
• KPI Framework & Operational Governance: Design and operationalize a comprehensive KPI and SLA/SLO framework covering incident volume, MTTR, MTTD, first‑call resolution, and system availability.
• Present regular metrics and trending analysis to Technology leadership.
• Outage Command & Recurring Issue Resolution: Serve as the executive incident commander during major outages — rapidly mobilizing cross‑functional teams, managing communications, and driving root cause analysis.
• Develop and execute structured remediation plans that address recurring patterns and systemic dependencies to prevent recurrence.
• Automation & Modern Tooling: Champion an automation‑first culture by identifying and implementing AI‑assisted and scripted solutions to reduce manual toil, accelerate resolution, and improve observability.
• Maintain awareness of emerging Web and AI technologies and assess their applicability to production operations.
• Third‑Party Vendor Management: Own relationships with key technology vendors and managed service providers. Integrate external support processes seamlessly with Antares’ internal workflows, hold vendors accountable to contractual SLAs, and lead escalations to vendor executive teams when needed.
• Cross‑Functional Relationship Building: Build trusted partnerships with Development, Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity teams to align on release readiness, change management, security controls, and platform health.
• Act as the connective tissue between operational teams and strategic technology initiatives.
• Strategic Execution Planning: Translate operational gaps and technology opportunities into actionable roadmaps and execution plans.
• Own program milestones end‑to‑end, driving accountability across teams and delivering measurable outcomes on schedule.
• Resiliency & Recovery: Collaborate with Engineering teams to ensure fault‑tolerant system design meeting RTO/RPO targets.
• Oversee replay and recovery capabilities for critical business processes, and maintain runbook documentation to reduce dependency on tribal knowledge.
• Performance, Scalability & Observability: Partner with Dev and Infrastructure teams to ensure systems scale for business growth, handle peak volumes, and employ autoscaling for cost efficiency.
• Drive adoption of Datadog or equivalent platforms for end‑to‑end tracing, proactive alerting, and fast root‑cause identification.
• ITSM & Workflow Tooling: Configure and manage ServiceNow for incident, change, and problem management.
• Leverage Control‑M or equivalent schedulers to maintain job chain integrity and proactively identify scheduling risks.

• 10+ years of technology operations experience, including at least 5 years leading L1 and/or L2 production support teams in a complex, multi‑platform financial services or enterprise environment.
• Demonstrated ability to design and operate KPI/SLA frameworks that drive measurable improvements in system availability, MTTR, and incident reduction.
• Proven track record managing third‑party technology vendors and managed service providers, including SLA enforcement, contractual accountability, and integration of vendor support workflows into internal ITSM processes.
• Hands‑on experience as incident commander during major outages: able to quickly assess system dependencies, mobilize the right teams, communicate clearly to stakeholders, and drive structured post‑incident reviews with accountable remediation plans.
• Experience building automation‑driven support operations using scripting, workflow tools (e.g., Power Automate, ServiceNow workflows), and AI/ML‑assisted triage.
• Awareness of applied AI capabilities relevant to IT operations (AIOps).
• Strong execution discipline — able to author detailed operational and project plans, establish milestones and owners, and drive completion with high accountability.
• Hands‑on experience configuring and reporting in ServiceNow (incident, change, problem management).
• Experience with Control‑M or equivalent job scheduling and orchestration platforms.
• Strong proficiency with Datadog or similar observability platforms for logging, monitoring, and alerting.
• Experience with Azure Cloud services and cloud operations fundamentals.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, fault‑tolerant design patterns, and system dependency mapping.
• Ability to quickly construct and communicate application topology during high‑pressure outage scenarios.
• Excellent stakeholder communication and relationship management skills; able to operate with credibility at the executive level while maintaining close working relationships with Engineering, Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity peers.
• Experience in financial services or similarly regulated industries is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with private credit, loan administration, or fund accounting technology platforms is a plus.

• Must have unrestricted authorization to work in the United States.
• Must be willing to comply with pre‑employment screening, including but not limited to drug testing, reference verification, and background check.
• Must be willing to work from the Chicago or New York office.

Base salary range: $160,000 - $225,000. This role is eligible for a discretionary annual bonus (based on company, business unit and individual performance). Our benefit offerings include medical, dental and vision coverage; employer‑paid short‑ and long‑term disability and life insurance; 401(k); profit sharing; paid time off; Maven family & fertility benefit; parental leave (including adoption, surrogacy and foster placement); as well as other voluntary benefits.

Antares is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.