Manager, Business

Gibson Dunn is a leading global law firm, advising clients on significant transactions and disputes. Our exceptional teams craft and deploy creative legal strategies that are meticulously tailored to every matter, however complex or high-stakes. The firm’s work is distinguished by a unique combination of precision and vision.

Based in California, New York or Washington D.C., the Manager, Business Applications will be responsible for the strategic direction, performance, and evolution of the firm’s Finance, HR, Marketing, and E-Discovery application ecosystem. This role blends portfolio leadership, application lifecycle governance, delivery oversight, and stakeholder engagement to ensure that systems remain reliable, secure, scalable, and aligned to the firm’s business objectives.

The ideal candidate brings strong leadership experience across enterprise applications, deep understanding of business processes and system integrations, and the ability to guide teams and vendors in delivering high-value technology solutions. This is a portfolio and people leadership role, as well as a hands-on development position.

Portfolio applications and technologies include:

• Finance:
  Aderant, Chrome River, Time Entry
• Human Resources:
  Workday, People Soft, ADP, Aderant, Qualtrics
• Marketing:
  Inter Action, Foundation, Vuture
• E-Discovery:
  Relativity Server, Relativity One, Page Vault

This role reports to the Director of Enterprise Application Solutions.

Responsibilities include:

• Define and maintain strategic roadmaps for Finance, HR, Marketing, and E-Discovery applications.
• Partner with business leaders to understand needs, pain points, and future requirements.
• Prioritize initiatives based on business value, risk, capacity, and alignment to firm strategy.
• Lead application rationalization initiatives to reduce redundancy and strengthen portfolio health.

• Oversee system stability, performance, upgrades, maintenance schedules, and enhancements.
• Ensure secure, compliant operation of applications aligned with firm and regulatory standards.
• Guide the transition from legacy systems to modern platforms, including data migrations and integrations.
• Establish KPIs for application performance, usage, and operational efficiency.

• Partner with Agile Delivery Leads, engineers, and business teams to drive predictable delivery.
• Ensure application enhancements, integrations, and upgrades meet quality, security, and change management requirements.
• Provide executive visibility into program milestones, risks, dependencies, and outcomes.
• Support major transformation programs (e.g., Workday, Aderant roadmap) with leadership and coordination.
• Serve as the primary technology partner for Finance, HR, Marketing, and E-Discovery leadership.
• Facilitate intake, prioritization, and roadmap discussions with stakeholders.
• Translate business objectives into actionable plans and ensure clear communication across teams.
• Promote adoption of new features, capabilities, and process improvements.
• Lead a team of application owners, analysts, and technical SMEs and provide guidance, coaching, and performance management.
• Collaborate with engineering, QA/UAT, security, infrastructure, data, and integration teams.
• Foster a high-performing, service-oriented culture that emphasizes transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Manage strategic vendor relationships, including Aderant, Workday, Foundation and Relativity.
• Oversee SLAs, escalations, contract renewals, licensing, and service reviews.
• Evaluate new solutions, coordinate POCs, and support vendor-driven initiatives and upgrades.

• Ensure all systems and delivery processes adhere to security, compliance, data governance, and audit requirements.
• Maintain documentation for application standards, operational procedures, and lifecycle processes.
• Identify risks and mitigation plans across the portfolio, escalating as appropriate to leadership.

• Strong knowledge of enterprise Finance, HR, Marketing, and E-Discovery systems.
• Understanding of integration patterns, data flows, and application lifecycle…