Senior Manager, IT

At McCarthy Tétrault, we offer challenging and rewarding career opportunities and are delighted to have been selected for the eleventh consecutive year in 2023 as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers and one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers. Our culture is built on professional excellence, collaboration, innovation, thought leadership and entrepreneurialism. We embrace inclusion in all its forms and we provide the tools and opportunities to help our people develop to their full potential.

This position is based out of Toronto. McCarthy Tétrault employees benefit from a hybrid work environment.

As an IT Senior Manager, you will be:

Leading IT Local Office (Toronto, Montreal, Calgary)

• Defining and reporting on service levels, implementing proactive measures, and assessing upgrade impacts to enhance customer service.
• Sending local office and firm-wide end-user communication relating to projects or key messages from the IT team.
• Managing Local Office hardware inventory and its deployment by identifying requirements and forecasting needs. Working with the Vendor Management Office for administering Local Office contracts, managing Local Office vendors and coordinating personnel.
• Providing information to IT leadership team on impact to user community both locally and firm-wide with respect to proposed changes to the technical environment.
• Serve as IT management representative to ensure high quality IT service is delivered to meet the needs of the regional offices.
• Serve as IT management advocate to engage and maintain relationship with the regional office management. This involves the conveying of key IT leadership message and to solicit feedback from regional offices.
• Providing input to the IT business planning process to address the needs (service and asset) of the regional offices and to mitigate operational risk.
• Coordinating and supporting firm-wide IT implementation and change windows to minimize impact to the regional offices while meeting the IT objectives.
• Maintaining firm-wide IT policies and procedures from regional offices perspective.
• Ensuring standard IT practices are followed thru in service level management, incident management, request fulfilment, change management.
• Interact with other functional groups to communicate upcoming changes that will impact their teams and collaborating on local offices projects or events.
• Proactively identify opportunities to collaborate with other functional teams to support and achieve firm priorities.
• Attend local management meetings and report IT initiatives to firm-wide management team.

Managing Service Desk

• Managing and motivating a team providing customer and technical support, including training, coaching, and ensuring service coverage.
• Managing the service levels to the expectations of a demanding user community. Includes investigating and resolving service issues or complaints to the satisfaction of the end user, or, where this cannot be achieved, escalating the issue to senior management.
• Reviewing support issues and evaluating the associated support services provided by monitoring response quality and following-up with users (if necessary). Benchmarking and reporting on local service levels.
• Developing, promoting, and ensuring maintenance of an integrated end-user support knowledgebase (i.e. documenting and sharing firm-wide IT issues and their resolutions) to improve first-level call resolution for the service desk and to improve customer service.
• Reporting operational achievements and progress to the Director, IT Services Management and CTO on a regular basis including statistical analyses and action plans for improvements.
• Developing, implementing, maintaining and updating local and firm-wide IT policies and procedures.
• Monitoring Service Desk, creating reports from ticket tracking software, reviewing and analysing data and summarizing issues to make sure Service Desk Analysts are online and ready, including making sure phone waiting time is kept to the set minimum (to be determined yearly).
• Collaborating with other IT Senior Managers on ideas and processes to improve the overall end user experience and ensure operational consistency.
• Serving as the primary point of contact for escalating advanced technical issues to external vendors and internal development teams.

COE Management

ITIL Processes (Firm-wide Responsibilities)

• Owning and communicating the change management process, ensuring clarity and understanding among stakeholders.
• Chairing weekly change management meetings with key stakeholders including Directors from other functional groups within IT.
• Evaluating all change requests to ensure they are necessary and beneficial.
• Ensuring that changes are implemented smoothly and with minimal disruption to IT services. This involves coordinating with various stakeholders and managing the change process from start to finish.
• Ensuring that changes are communication to all relevant stakeholders.
• Ownership of the problem management process and ensuring it is well-documented and communicated to all stakeholders.
• Chairing the bi-weekly meetings with key stakeholders from other IT functions.
• Identifying and diagnosing the root causes of recurring incidents.
• Collaborating with other IT teams to develop workarounds or permanent solutions.
• Communicating with relevant stakeholders about the status of problems, their impact, and the progress of resolution efforts.
• Lead the response to major incidents, ensuring that all necessary resources are mobilized and that the incident is resolved as quickly as possible. This includes coordinating with various IT teams and external vendors to restore services.
• Ensuring that all relevant stakeholders are informed about the status of major incidents, including their impact and the progress of resolution efforts.
• Developing and maintaining the knowledge management system including ensuring that all knowledge articles are accurate, up-to-date, and easily accessible to all relevant stakeholders.
• Regularly monitoring the usage and effectiveness of the knowledge management system. This includes analyzing metrics to identify areas for improvement and ensuring that the system meets the needs of the organization.
• Responsible to develop and maintain a comprehensive roadmap for audio-visual technology, ensuring alignment with the firm's strategic goals. Oversee the budget for audio-visual equipment and services, ensuring cost-effective solutions and timely upgrades.
• Responsible for regularly inspecting and maintain all audio-visual equipment to ensure it is functioning properly.
• Coordination with firm-wide team to provide technical support for events and meetings held on the conference floor.
• Responsible for the inventory management for all end user computing technology, including laptops and peripherals.
• Responsible for printers including managing the budget, maintaining vendor relationship, ordering and deploying new computers.
• Responsible for mobile device management including managing the contract with Bell and the annual upgrades. Maintaining relationship with deployment partner.
• Responsible for ensuring the effective management of the ServiceNow platform, including supporting bi-annual upgrades.
• Regularly test the IT Service Management (ITSM) functions within ServiceNow to ensure they are working as expected.
• Managing the integration and optimization of all ITIL processes within ServiceNow.
• Supporting the continual improvement of the use of ServiceNow for the ITSM function.
• Participating in the development of MT People changes.
• Lead and participate in local and firm-wide projects.

As our ideal candidate, you will distinguish yourself by the following profile:

• University degree in a related field.
• 10 plus years of experience as a technology professional ideally acquired in a professional services environment with at least 5 years in a supervisory capacity.
• ITIL Certification, foundation Certificate would be an asset.
• Expert-level experience with MS Word and MS Exchange/Outlook. Must be familiar with Help Desk / Service Desk with preference for ServiceNow.
• Experience and proven ability in a leadership role, including leading a group of individuals into a team culture.
• Experience and competence in coaching and managing technical support staff.
• Experience with a professional service organization’s structure and processes would be an asset.
• Experience with ServiceNow and queue management software including advances within generative AI and experience with transformation of services that includes AI.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills.
• Ability to identify development, education, training and support requirements of direct reports and ability to recommend effective course of action for same.
• Highly developed problem solving skills, including analytical and critical thinking.
• Capacity to handle high pressure situations and tight deadlines.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Experience with a professional service organization’s structure and processes is an asset.

As a member of the McCarthy team, you will have access to:

• Outstanding benefits from day one, including insurance premiums paid by the Firm and wellness and technology reimbursements.
• Competitive compensation and generous time off, including a day off to volunteer and a day off for your birthday.
• A commitment to professional development and growth opportunities for our people at all levels, supported by a culture that fully embraces and encourages two-way feedback.
• Strong community involvement and a commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.
• A collaborative, cohesive culture that connects lawyers and business teams through collective purpose.

We thank all applicants for their interest in McCarthy Tétrault; however, only chosen applicants will be contacted. We regret that we are unable to respond to individual inquiries about application status. McCarthy Tétrault is an equal opportunity employer that fosters an inclusive, equitable, and accessible environment. Please notify us if you require accommodation at any time during the recruitment process.