Associate Director, Platform Services

About the Team

Morningstar's frontline Platform Services team, based in Mumbai, provides support functions for the Global Platform Services organization. The team handles incidents (24x5 coverage with on-call weekends) and service requests escalated from Morningstar's monitoring, service desk, and desktop support employee experience groups, working in close collaboration with third-line engineering teams based in North America, EMEA, and APAC.

The Role

Morningstar is looking for a highly motivated and collaborative Associate Director of Platform Services to lead a team based in our Navi Mumbai office. The ideal candidate thrives on new experiences and challenges, enjoys leading a team with global responsibility, and is passionate about implementing and improving processes with an emphasis on quality outcomes.

This role leads a team of 3 direct reports (2 Senior Managers, 1 Manager), overseeing a total team of 29 across shifts. While day-to-day coverage and on-call rotation are managed by the Senior Managers and Manager, the Associate Director is expected to be available for escalation on major incidents or high-severity issues.The successful candidate will play an instrumental role in recruiting, building, and maintaining the current support team, and in advancing the team's technology support capabilities. These capabilities include troubleshooting, break/fix, configuration, upgrades, and project work.  Candidate will also grow team maturity through process creation, automation, and standardization. Experience applying AI to meaningfully improve support operations and efficiency is a requirement.

Interested candidates should have a proven track record leading a team focused on global support or global operational output, a technical management background, a solid understanding of Platform Services technologies, and highly effective English communication skills.

Platform Services Technologies

• Network – WAN/LAN
• Server / Storage / Backup / Virtualization/ Operating Systems
• Data Center
• Identity & Access Management
• Cloud Operations (AWS/Azure)

Responsibilities

Leadership & Team Management

• Lead the Morningstar India Platform Services support function, managing a team of leaders (Senior Managers and Managers) who own their own direct reports, shift patterns, and coverage planning.
• Drive recruitment, growth, and retention of Platform Services personnel.
• Serve as the escalation point for major incidents or high-severity issues, as needed.

Process & Operational Excellence

• Own end-to-end incident and ticket management, including queue prioritization and serving as the frontline escalation point for incident response.
• Document, standardize, and migrate support processes from the Global Platform Services teams in North America, EMEA, and APAC
• Identify, track, and report against process KPIs; deliver operational reporting and maintain dashboards.

Strategic & Cross-Functional

• Identify and drive opportunities for service and process improvement, including automation and AI-driven efficiencies.
• Understand business and stakeholder priorities, adjusting resource focus as needed.
• Support cross-functional projects as required.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or Diploma with strong academic credentials
• 8+ years At least five years of IT infrastructure management experience, including at least 3 years managing people-managers (not just individual contributors), with a proven, demonstrable record of leading a team focused on support or operational output.
• A background in technical infrastructure/cloud and associated knowledge
• ITIL Foundation certification required; ITIL Intermediate/Expert or Service Operation practice certification preferred or higher.
• Demonstrated experience applying AI/automation tools to improve support operations and efficiency.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Strong organizational and teamwork skills

Morningstar is an equal opportunity employer.