Business Applications Manager

REPORTS TO: Controller

FLSA STATUS: Exempt

SUPERVISES: Application Development Team (Plus Contractors)

Benefits

• Salary Range: $110,000-$135,000 annually (depending on experience)
• Medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance (including spouse and children) with modest payroll deductions
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 3 weeks of vacation
• Supplemental leave (used with Washington Paid Family & Medical Leave)
• 401(k) with company match
• Quarterly bonus structure
• Tuition reimbursement

ROLE SUMMARY:

Seeking a proactive, hands-on leader who bridges business needs and application solutions. The role partners with Operations and other functions to understand processes and pain points, convert them into a clear technology vision, and execute a prioritized, budget-minded roadmap with measurable outcomes. Scope includes sustaining and improving application platforms (many legacy), owning integrations and data flows, managing a small development team, and delivering projects end-to-end. IT/OT applications are treated as levers to improve manufacturing throughput, quality, cost, and reliability. The role embraces practical new technologies—LLMs where useful—to boost efficiency and quality. Coding is not the emphasis; the position prioritizes management and leadership, while requiring the ability to read and guide work across multiple languages (Python, .NET, SQL, and legacy 4GL/domain-specific languages) to keep delivery moving.

How Success Will Be Measured:
• Business engagement & value: Deliver pragmatic solutions with visible KPIs (cycle time, uptime, user satisfaction, ROI; manufacturing metrics like throughput/scrap/FPY).
• Sustain & stabilize: Reliable daily operations with clear SLOs/SLAs, disciplined change management, and clean audit evidence.
• Plan within constraints: Tech-stack roadmap that fits budget and staffing, reduces technical debt, and lands releases on time.
• Enterprise integration: ERP ↔ MES and adjacent systems remain aligned through healthy, monitored interfaces/middleware; dependable data flows.
• Delivery velocity & quality: Shorter lead time for changes, higher deployment frequency, improved test coverage, fewer defects.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES: 

1) Leadership & Business Partnering

• Proactively engage on-site: walk the floor, surface opportunities, lead discovery, define success metrics, and keep stakeholders aligned.
• Lead the team: set goals, allocate work, coach developer team, run standups/reviews, enforce definition-of-done, and build a reusable knowledge base.
• Stakeholder & vendor management: communicate trade-offs plainly, track benefits, hold partners to outcomes, and report status to the Controller and business leads.

2) Systems Sustain & Improve (ERP/MES, OT, Interfaces)

• Reliability first: own availability, capacity, and support processes for ERP/finance/operations applications (including legacy/on-prem).
• ERP/MES coordination: maintain clear boundaries and data handoffs (orders, BOM/routings, confirmations, materials, quality, inventory).
• Middleware/interfaces: operate and improve APIs, ETL/ELT, EDI, and/or iPaaS with monitoring, alerting, and robust error handling.
• OT partnership: coordinate with Operations Technology on MES/historian changes, maintenance windows, and safety/cyber constraints.
• Pragmatic modernization: stabilize and extend where it pays; replace selectively; make budget-minded build-vs-buy decisions.

3) Delivery & Portfolio Execution (includes PM responsibilities)

• Roadmap ownership: maintain a value-ranked portfolio balancing quick wins and strategic change; sequence by impact, risk, and cost.
• Project delivery: plan and deliver upgrades and integrations (REST/GraphQL, SQL, ETL/ELT, EDI, iPaaS); manage risks, milestones, RAID logs, and communications.
• Azure DevOps ownership: define branching/PR policies, CI/CD pipelines, environments/releases, and dashboards; trace work items → commits/PRs → builds/releases.
• Own value tracking and TCO/ROI: maintain a value-ranked backlog, quantify benefits, and adjust sequencing based on evidence.
• Enablement tools: apply LLMs/AI as appropriate (PR assist, test scaffolding, doc/search) with simple guardrails and outcome metrics.

4) SDLC, Quality & Audit/Controls

• Disciplined SDLC: requirements → design reviews → test plans → change/release management → post-mortems; right-sized documentation.
• Quality & reliability: increase unit/integration test coverage, reduce change-fail rate, maintain rollback/runbooks, and improve MTTR.
• Controls: operate ITGC (change, access/SoD, backups/DR) and application-level controls; provide IPE/IUC evidence; partner with Internal Audit.
• Change governance: chair or participate in the Change Control Board; capture level-of-effort and value/cost trade-offs; enforce change-freeze windows and approvals.

EDUCATION:

• Required: Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Software/Computer/Industrial Engineering, or Operations Management (with a strong systems/ERP focus).
• Preferred: Master’s degree (MBA, MSIS, or Engineering Management) helpful but not required.
• Equivalency: In lieu of a degree, 10+ years of progressively responsible experience leading ERP/MES, integrations, and application delivery in a manufacturing environment may substitute.
• Plus: Manufacturing coursework or experience (process/IE, supply chain) strongly preferred.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• 7–10+ years in business applications/application management, implementations, or integrations.
• Proven ownership of ERP/finance/operations applications and comfort with legacy/on-prem environments and integrations.
• Comfortable reading/guiding code across Python, .NET, SQL, and legacy 4GL/domain-specific languages; able to direct reviews and standards without being a heads-down coder.
• Hands-on with Azure DevOps (repos, PR gates, CI/CD, environments, dashboards) and SDLC best practices.
• Proven budget-minded decision making (build vs. buy, vendor selection, license optimization) and roadmap planning aligned to operational goals.
• Working knowledge of audit & controls (ITGC, SoD, IPE/IUC) and evidence expectations.
• Familiarity with ERP–MES data boundaries; ANSI/ISA-95 awareness is a plus.
• LLM/AI familiarity as a delivery accelerator (no deep ML engineering required).
• Excellent communication; able to turn ambiguity into a clear, achievable plan.

Manufacturing Experience (strong plus)

• Experience in discrete or process manufacturing and ability to translate shop-floor realities into application requirements and measurable outcomes.

Preferred Certifications (nice-to-have; not required)

• Project/Delivery & Change: PMP or PMI-ACP; CSM/PSM or CSPO/PSPO; ITIL 4 Foundation; Prosci Change Management.
• Architecture/Governance: TOGAF (Foundation); COBIT Foundation; ISACA CISA/CRISC.
• Microsoft/Azure & Data: AZ-400 (Azure DevOps Engineer); PL-300 (Power BI Data Analyst) or DP-900 (Data Fundamentals); PL-200/PL-400 (Power Platform).
• AI (optional): AI-900 (Azure AI Fundamentals).
• OT collaboration (optional): ISA/IEC 62443 awareness.

Career Path:
High-impact performance can grow into a Technology Director track, spanning broader IT/OT strategy and a larger portfolio.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

• Approximately 90% of the role is performed in a standard office setting, following normal safety precautions.
• The remaining 10% involves work in a plant or manufacturing environment, which includes exposure to operating machinery and typical industrial conditions.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

No third-party candidate submissions are being accepted at this time.

This position has been determined to be a safety-sensitive position and requires a pre-employment drug and alcohol screen that includes marijuana.

ABOUT KAISER ALUMIINUM

Talented people join our team because we are passionate about environmental sustainability, employee growth, and community engagement. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture, and we strive to reflect the multicultural communities we serve. Join us in shaping a more sustainable and inclusive future.