Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Job Scheduler Assistant

🎯 Role Definition

The Job Scheduler Assistant is a cornerstone of our IT Operations team, acting as the primary guardian of our automated business and system processes. This role is responsible for the day-to-day monitoring, management, and first-level troubleshooting of our enterprise-wide job scheduling environment. You'll be at the heart of our operations, ensuring that thousands of critical jobs—from data processing and file transfers to application workflows and system maintenance tasks—run smoothly, on time, and without error. Success in this position means guaranteeing the reliability and stability of the automated services that our entire business depends on, making you a vital contributor to our operational excellence.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

IT Support Specialist / Help Desk Technician
Data Center Operator
Junior System Administrator

Advancement To:

Senior Job Scheduler / Workload Automation Analyst
Workload Automation Engineer
IT Operations Lead / Supervisor

Lateral Moves:

System Administrator
DevOps Engineer
Production Support Analyst

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Diligently monitor the enterprise job scheduling environment using tools like Control-M, Autosys, or a similar platform to ensure all automated batch jobs and workflows execute successfully and according to the predefined schedule.
Proactively identify, investigate, and meticulously document job failures, processing delays, and performance bottlenecks, initiating first-level recovery procedures to minimize business impact.
Execute defined escalation protocols by promptly notifying and collaborating with senior schedulers, application support teams, developers, and system administrators for complex or unresolved issues.
Manage and fulfill service requests for ad-hoc job executions, holds, and modifications submitted by business users and IT teams, ensuring proper authorization and documentation.
Perform routine scheduling maintenance tasks, including the implementation of calendar updates for holidays, fiscal period ends, and special processing days to ensure schedule accuracy.
Carefully manage job dependencies, predecessors, and successors to maintain the integrity of complex processing streams and prevent cascading failures.
Assist in the deployment of new or updated job schedules into the production environment, following strict change management procedures and conducting post-implementation verification.
Maintain comprehensive and up-to-date documentation for scheduling procedures, recovery actions, contact lists, and standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Generate and distribute daily, weekly, and monthly reports on job execution status, failure rates, SLA compliance, and system performance to stakeholders.
Participate in shift turnover meetings, providing clear and concise communication regarding the status of the scheduling environment, ongoing issues, and pending tasks.
Monitor critical file transfers (FTP/SFTP) and data feeds, verifying their successful transmission and receipt and troubleshooting any connectivity or data integrity issues.
Place jobs on hold and release them as required for system maintenance windows, application deployments, or specific business requests, coordinating actions with relevant teams.
Rerun or restart failed jobs from the point of failure after the root cause has been addressed, ensuring data consistency and process completion.
Review and analyze job logs, system logs, and application output to assist in the root cause analysis of recurring or complex job failures.
Support testing and validation of new job schedules in non-production environments to ensure they are robust and ready for promotion to production.
Uphold service level agreements (SLAs) by ensuring the timely execution and completion of critical batch processing windows.
Perform basic scripting edits or updates under the guidance of senior team members to resolve simple job script-related failures.
Interface directly with various business units to understand their scheduling needs and provide operational support for their automated processes.
Monitor system resource utilization (CPU, memory, disk space) on servers where jobs are executing to identify potential performance impacts on the scheduling environment.
Act as a first point of contact for all inquiries related to the production batch schedule, providing timely and accurate status updates to all levels of the organization.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests by executing predefined data extraction jobs and delivering the output to authorized users.
Contribute to the continuous improvement of scheduling processes by identifying opportunities for automation and efficiency gains.
Collaborate with application and infrastructure teams to understand how system changes might impact the job scheduling environment.
Participate in team meetings and agile ceremonies, providing operational insights and updates on scheduling activities.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficiency with at least one major enterprise job scheduling tool (e.g., BMC Control-M, Broadcom Autosys, IBM Workload Scheduler, Stonebranch).
Solid understanding of operating system fundamentals for both Windows Server and Linux/UNIX environments.
Competency with command-line interfaces (CLI) for navigating systems, executing scripts, and performing basic troubleshooting.
Familiarity with IT Service Management (ITSM) concepts and tools (like ServiceNow or Jira), particularly for incident and change management.
Basic knowledge of scripting languages such as PowerShell, Bash, or Perl is a significant advantage.
Understanding of file transfer protocols (FTP, SFTP) and their associated security principles.
Ability to read and interpret job logs and system error messages to diagnose issues.
Knowledge of relational databases (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle) and the ability to execute simple SQL queries is a plus.
Awareness of network fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS) as they relate to job execution across distributed systems.
Experience working in a 24x7 operations or data center environment.

Soft Skills

Exceptional attention to detail and a high degree of accuracy in all tasks.
Strong analytical and methodical problem-solving skills.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey technical information clearly.
Ability to remain calm and work effectively under pressure in a fast-paced environment.
A strong sense of ownership and accountability for the stability of the production environment.
Customer-focused mindset with a commitment to providing excellent service.
Highly organized with the ability to prioritize tasks and manage time effectively.
Collaborative team player who can also work independently with minimal supervision.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

High School Diploma or GED, complemented by relevant technical certifications (e.g., CompTIA A+, Network+) or equivalent direct work experience.

Preferred Education:

Associate's or Bachelor's Degree in a technology-related field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Information Technology
Management Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

1-3 years of experience in an IT role such as IT Operations, Production Support, Data Center Operations, or as a Help Desk Analyst.

Preferred:

Direct, hands-on experience in a job scheduling or workload automation role is highly desirable and will be given strong consideration.