Operations Analytics Lead

MKS2 Technologies, LLC, an award-winning high growth small business, creates innovative and customer-centric technology solutions in the areas of Cyber Security, Instructional Design and Training, Software Engineering and IT Support Services to improve the security and well-being of our clients. Our commitment to excellence and our “Mission First” orientation has resulted in steady growth and an expanding client base across government agencies. We have employees nationwide and for the past three consecutive years were named one of the fastest growing Veteran-owned companies in the nation. Please take a moment to browse through our website and learn more about what it means to serve with MKS2.

Operations Analytics Lead

Pay Rate: $55.28 - $56.73 per hour during the 6–12-month contract term. $125K upon conversion.

Location: Albany, NY - Hybrid schedule in office twice a week and every other Friday.

Job Description:

We are seeking a Operations Analytics Lead to lead operational analytics, observability, systems administration coordination, and KPI/OKR governance across enterprise applications and technology services. This role will drive the collection, validation, analysis, and reporting of operational metrics while using tools such as Splunk or Dynatrace to improve visibility into application health, infrastructure performance, service reliability, and business outcomes. The role partners with application, infrastructure, development, security, and business teams to identify issues, guide root-cause analysis, streamline operational processes, and transition repeatable metrics and reporting activities to the Operations team.

WHAT YOU’LL OWN & DELIVER

KPI/OKR Metrics Collection & Governance: Define and maintain metric definitions, targets, owners, data sources, collection schedules, and validation controls. Consolidate KPI/OKR data and communicate performance against objectives.

Splunk Analytics & Log Management: Develop and optimize SPL searches, reports, alerts, dashboards, and scheduled reports. Analyze application, system, security, and integration logs; monitor HTTP status codes, errors, transaction failures, ingestion trends, and recurring patterns; and translate findings into actionable operational insights.

Observability & Performance Monitoring: Use analytical capabilities for application performance monitoring, distributed tracing, service-flow analysis, infrastructure visibility, anomaly detection, and alerting. Correlate performance indicators with logs and events to help isolate service degradation and accelerate root-cause analysis.

Operational Analytics & Visualization: Build operational scorecards and dashboards using appropriate analytics and visualization tools, such as Power BI, Splunk dashboards, and Excel. Track availability, latency, error rates, incident trends, SLA/SLO performance, capacity, workload, and automation outcomes.

Systems & Application Administration: Coordinate and support administration of Linux/Unix and Windows environments, application servers, middleware, and integration platforms. Relevant areas may include JBoss, MuleSoft, Twilio integrations, service configuration, access and permissions, certificates, scheduled jobs, deployments, patching coordination, capacity monitoring, and environment health checks.

Scripting & Operational Automation: Use Shell/Bash, Python, and, where appropriate, Java or API-based integrations to automate data collection, log processing, recurring reports, health checks, alert enrichment, and routine operational tasks.

Incident, Problem & Root-Cause Management: Partner with application and infrastructure teams to investigate incidents, correlate logs and metrics, identify root causes, document corrective actions, and track recurring issues through resolution. Support incident, problem, and change-management processes.

Monitoring, Alerting & Service Reliability: Review monitoring coverage, alert thresholds, dashboards, and escalation paths. Reduce noisy or duplicate alerts, improve signal quality, and support service availability, resilience, and operational readiness.

Stakeholder Coordination & Project Management: Manage milestones, dependencies, risks, action items, and reporting commitments. Work with business owners, engineering teams, application support, and leadership to establish accountability and communicate operational performance.

DevOps Issue & Defect Management: Lead cross-functional tracking and coordination of production issues, application defects, incident investigations, and remediation activities across Development, QA, Infrastructure, and Operations. Monitor SLA commitments, identify recurring problems, track corrective and preventive actions, and provide clear status reporting to technical teams and leadership.

Operations Transition & Knowledge Transfer: Create runbooks, standard operating procedures, support matrices, metric inventories, escalation procedures, and training materials. Lead knowledge-transfer sessions and coordinate formal handover of KPI/OKR collection, dashboards, and recurring operational processes to the Operations team.

Continuous Improvement: Identify opportunities to improve observability, data quality, process consistency, automation, system reliability, and operational efficiency; track outcomes through measurable KPIs and OKRs.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO SUCCEED

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

Required Qualifications

Experience in IT operations, systems or application administration, operational analytics, technical project coordination, or a related enterprise technology role.

Experience defining, collecting, validating, analyzing, and reporting KPIs, OKRs, SLAs, or SLOs.

Hands-on experience with log analysis, monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis.

Hands-on experience with Splunk Enterprise, SPL, dashboards, alerts, log ingestion, field extraction, and data normalization.

Experience managing DevOps issue and defect lifecycles, including triage, prioritization, backlog and aging management, cross-team escalation, release coordination, and resolution reporting.

Ability to create clear operational reports, dashboards, scorecards, and leadership updates.

Strong knowledge of incident tracking, problem management, change coordination, documentation, and operational handover.

Strong stakeholder management, communication, analytical thinking, prioritization, and continuous-improvement skills.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with performance tool monitoring, distributed tracing, infrastructure monitoring, service flow, and anomaly detection.

Familiarity with observability and monitoring platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, AppDynamics, Elastic/ELK, or OpenTelemetry.

Experience administering or supporting Linux/Unix and Windows systems, application servers, middleware, and enterprise integrations.

Knowledge of JBoss, MuleSoft, REST APIs, JSON, SFTP, and Twilio or similar communications/integration services.

Scripting or automation experience with Shell/Bash, Python, PowerShell, Java, or REST APIs.

Familiarity with IT service management and workflow tools such as ServiceNow and Jira, and analytics tools such as Power BI and Excel.

Understanding of networking and application fundamentals, including DNS, TLS/certificates, HTTP/HTTPS, ports, authentication, access control, and service dependencies.

Experience preparing runbooks, operational readiness checklists, support models, knowledge-transfer materials, and service transition plans.

EXPECTED DELIVERABLES

A governed KPI/OKR inventory with definitions, owners, targets, data sources, and reporting cadence.

Splunk and/or Dynatrace dashboards, searches, alerts, and operational reports aligned to service needs.

Log and performance analysis that highlights error patterns, service degradation, capacity concerns, and actionable remediation.

Documented operational health checks, support procedures, esc