Process Lead

Description

The Role:

System Engineers are responsible for partitioning and allocating product, feature and system functionality to implementation teams. Safety, reliability, and regulatory compliance are factors considered in system design with the goal of optimizing performance, design, testability, and deployability. System engineers identify use cases, define functional technical requirements, enable robust implementation designs, and ensure built-in quality with test definition and traceability.

This role leads the operating model, governance, and end-to-end delivery lifecycle for the Atlassian tool stack. The Senior Systems Engineer will serve as the process lead for Atlassian platforms-Jira, Confluence, and Jira Align-driving standards, scalability, and business value across engineering and product teams. Experience with full-stack software development is highly desirable to accelerate automation, integrations, and platform extensibility.

Hybrid : This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to the Michigan IT Innovation Center three times per week, at minimum.

Company Vehicle : Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate.

Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.

What You'll Do:

• Own the end-to-end operating model for Jira, Confluence, and Jira Align, including governance, standards, intake, prioritization, and roadmap for platform capabilities.
• Define, implement, and continuously improve enterprise templates, workflows, schemes, fields, spaces, and permissions aligned to Agile, Scrum/Kanban, and SAFe practices.
• Lead process design for demand intake, portfolio planning, dependency management, and value stream visualization in Jira Align; ensure consistent data models and roll-up reporting.
• Partner with InfoSec, Compliance, and Enterprise Architecture to enforce access models, SSO/SAML/OAuth, data retention, auditability, and change controls (e.g., SOX/ITGC where applicable).
• Serve as service owner for reliability, performance, capacity, DR/backup, and upgrade strategy across Cloud and/or Data Center footprints; establish SLIs/SLOs and error budgets.
• Drive platform health: app lifecycle and marketplace add-on governance (e.g., ScriptRunner, Automation for Jira, JMWE), instance hygiene, consolidation/migrations, and deprecation plans.
• Build and maintain integrations using REST/GraphQL APIs and eventing with CI/CD, SCM, incident/CMDB, identity, and analytics platforms; steward data quality and lineage.
• Establish metrics and insights: define canonical dashboards for delivery flow (e.g., cycle time, throughput, WIP), agile health, dependency risk, and portfolio predictability.
• Leverage AI capabilities (e.g., Atlassian Intelligence, Azure OpenAI) to automate routine tasks, enhance search and insights, and prototype AI-assisted workflows with clear governance and guardrails.
• Create and socialize SOPs/runbooks, RACIs, and change/incident/problem management processes; facilitate CAB readiness for platform changes.
• Coach teams and admins on best practices; deliver enablement materials, office hours, and communities of practice to drive adoption and self-service.

• 8+ years in enterprise systems engineering or platform administration with 5+ years focused on Atlassian ecosystems (Jira, Confluence) in large-scale environments.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated stewardship of Jira Align or equivalent enterprise portfolio tooling at scale (multi-ART SAFe environment or comparable).
• Hands-on administration expertise: schemes, workflows, permissions, custom fields, advanced roadmaps, automation, and space governance.
• Strong grasp of Agile/Lean delivery (Scrum, Kanban) and SAFe constructs (ARTs, PI planning, dependencies, objectives, lean portfolio).
• Proficiency with identity and security: SSO/SAML/OAuth, SCIM, role/permission models, data protection, and audit compliance.
• Experience operating Atlassian Cloud and/or Data Center (install/upgrade strategy, node scaling, Postgres/DB care, backup/restore, DR).
• Scripting/automation skill in one or more: Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Bash/PowerShell; strong familiarity with Atlassian REST APIs.
• Experience integrating and governing AI tooling in the SDLC: Atlassian Intelligence, code assistants (e.g., GitHub Copilot), retrieval-augmented search, prompt patterns, and enterprise guardrails.
• Clear, concise communication with executives and engineers; proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and influence without direct authority.

• Full-stack development: modern front-end (React/TypeScript), back-end (Node.js, Java/Spring Boot, or .NET), API design (REST/GraphQL), and automated testing (Jest, Cypress, JUnit).
• AI and automation: Atlassian Intelligence, OpenAI/Azure OpenAI services, RAG patterns and vector search (e.g., pgvector/Pinecone), prompt engineering, and GenAI governance/guardrails.
• Atlassian extensibility: Forge/Connect apps, webhooks, ScriptRunner groovy, custom integrations, and event-driven workflows.
• CI/CD and DevOps tooling: GitHub/GitLab/Azure DevOps pipelines, artifact management, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
• Observability for platform health: logging, metrics, distributed tracing, and Synthetics; performance diagnosis and capacity planning.
• Data and analytics: SQL (Postgres), data modeling for portfolio roll-ups, and BI dashboards (e.g., Tableau/Power BI).

• Governance and Standards
  
  
  • Define platform guardrails, naming conventions, and reuse patterns; manage app marketplace risk and lifecycle.
• Reliability and Operations
  
  
  • Establish SLIs/SLOs, alerts, runbooks; lead incident/problem management and post-incident reviews.
• Security and Compliance
  
  
  • Enforce least-privilege models, audit trails, change controls, retention, and eDiscovery/legal hold coordination.
• Delivery and Adoption
  
  
  • Run intake/triage, maintain a transparent backlog/roadmap, and measure value realization and adoption.
• Integration and Automation
  
  
  • Implement and harden integrations with identity, CI/CD, incident/ITSM, CMDB, and financial/portfolio systems.
  
  
  
  • Design, pilot, and govern AI-assisted workflows and integrations (Atlassian Intelligence, LLM services, vector search), including access controls, quality reviews, and telemetry.