Lead Incident Manager

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

The Lead Incident Manager is accountable for enterprise-wide incident and problem management execution, and continuous improvement. This role provides technical and operational leadership across incident response, problem management, and production disaster recovery coordination to ensure rapid service restoration, minimized business impact, and adherence to governance and regulatory requirements.

This position sets standards, drives operational maturity, and influences cross-functional technology and business leaders to strengthen resiliency, reduce systemic risk, and improve service reliability. The Lead Incident Manager ensures audit readiness, executive transparency, and alignment with Business Continuity Management (BCM) and risk frameworks.

Essential Functions

Incident Leadership

• Serve as the enterprise Incident Commander for all severity incidents providing command-and-control leadership during critical events.
• Establish incident response standards, escalation protocols, and decision frameworks to ensure consistent and effective execution across technology domains.
• Lead post-incident reviews and executive-level debriefs focused on root cause, risk exposure, and systemic improvements.

• Own and evolve the Problem Management framework, ensuring effective root cause analysis, corrective actions, and long-term risk mitigation.
• Analyze enterprise incident trends, recurring failure patterns, and systemic risks; partner with Engineering, Infrastructure, and Business teams to drive sustainable improvements.
• Define and monitor KPIs (MTTR, incident recurrence, SLA impact, etc.) to measure operational health and maturity.

• Lead incident coordination for Production Disaster Recovery events and Business Recovery Exercises.
• Ensure procedures meet Business Continuity Management governance requirements and regulatory standards.
• Partner with Risk, Compliance, and Audit teams to maintain documentation, artifacts, and evidence supporting internal and external audits.

• Create, maintain, and continuously enhance incident and problem management policies, procedures, and playbooks.
• Ensure alignment with ITIL, ITSM, and enterprise risk management frameworks.
• Drive automation and tooling improvements within ITSM platforms to improve response efficiency and reporting accuracy.

Communication & Stakeholder Influence

• Provide timely, accurate, and executive-ready communications during major incidents.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leadership during high-impact operational events.
• Influence cross-functional leaders to prioritize reliability engineering, risk reduction, and resiliency investments.

Risk & Security Stewardship

• Support the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of systems and data.
• Ensure incident processes integrate with cybersecurity, operational risk, and regulatory compliance requirements.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in Incident Management, IT Operations, Production Support, SRE, or related disciplines, including leadership of major incidents.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-level incident response and problem management programs.
• Strong knowledge of Business Continuity planning and Disaster Recovery execution.
• Deep understanding of ITIL and IT Service Management frameworks.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical issues for executive audiences.
• Proven ability to remain calm, decisive, and structured during high-pressure, high-visibility situations.

Preferred Qualifications

• ITIL® 4 Foundation or higher certification.
• Business Continuity certifications (CBCP, CBCI, MBCP).
• Experience operating in regulated or audit-intensive environments.
• Experience implementing ITSM tooling enhancements or automation initiatives.
   

The base pay scale for this position in:
Phoenix, AZ/ Chicago, IL in USD per year is: $104,000 - $130,000.
San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $125,000 - $156,000.
Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.

This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness 

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.

• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.

• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.

• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave

• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.