About this role
This is a remote position.
Director of IT Operations
About the Role
The Director of IT Operations is responsible for the day-to-day delivery, reliability, and security of the company's IT environment. This leader owns the people, processes, and technology behind change management, the service desk, end-user support, infrastructure operations, and operational security. Reporting to the CIO/VP of Technology, the Director of IT Operations sets the standard for operational discipline, audit readiness, and service quality across the organization.
This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who has built operational programs from the ground up, who can sit equally well in a Change Advisory Board, an executive readout, or a Sev 1 bridge call, and who measures success in uptime, audit findings, ticket SLAs, and team development.
Key Responsibilities
Change Management & Governance
- Own the enterprise change management program, including policies, workflows, and approval gates for all production changes.
- Chair the Change Advisory Board (CAB), facilitating risk review, implementation readiness, rollback planning, and final approval of change requests. ∙ Ensure 100% compliance on deployment plans, test evidence, rollback procedures, and post-change validation for every production change. ∙ Maintain complete audit trails and documentation in the ticketing system (e.g., Jira, ServiceNow) to support internal and external audits.
Help Desk & End-User Support
- Lead the IT service desk and end-user support function, setting SLA targets for response, resolution, and customer satisfaction.
- Oversee employee onboarding/offboarding, device provisioning, access management, and lifecycle support for laptops, peripherals, and software. ∙ Drive continuous improvement in ticket quality, first-contact resolution, knowledge base coverage, and self-service capability.
- Develop tiered support structure (Tier 1 through Tier 3) with clear escalation paths and ownership.
Incident & Problem Management
- Own the full incident lifecycle: detection, triage, escalation, communication, resolution, and post-incident review.
- Coordinate cross-functional response on Sev 1 and Sev 2 incidents, including executive communication and bridge facilitation.
- Drive root cause analysis (RCA), corrective action tracking, and closure for all high-severity events.
- Establish and maintain monthly, quarterly, and annual availability, outage, and trend reporting for senior leadership.
Infrastructure Operations & Monitoring
- Oversee 24x7 monitoring, alerting, and operations functions across production and corporate environments.
- Own the operational monitoring and observability stack (e.g., Splunk, Datadog, PagerDuty, Site24x7), ensuring detection coverage, alert quality, and on-call effectiveness.
- Partner with engineering and infrastructure teams to ensure operational readiness of new services before release.
Security & Compliance
- Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to maintain SOC, PCI, and other applicable audit readiness across IT operations.
- Enforce access controls, change controls, and operational security standards across systems and endpoints.
- Serve as the operational point of contact for auditors, evidence gathering, and control attestation.
Vendor & Asset Management
- Manage relationships with hardware, software, and managed service vendors (e.g., Dell, CDW, MSPs).
- Oversee IT asset lifecycle, procurement forecasting, license management, and cost accountability.
Team Leadership & Development
- Build, lead, coach, and develop a multi-functional IT operations team across change, service desk, support, and operations.
- Set performance standards, mentor staff, and create career growth paths from Tier 1 through senior roles.
- Foster a culture of accountability, documentation, and continuous improvement.
Requirements
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of progressive IT experience, with at least 5 years in IT operations leadership or management.
- Demonstrated ownership of a formal change management program, including CAB chairmanship and audit accountability.
- Strong track record managing 24x7 operations, incident response, and SLA driven service delivery.
- Experience supporting SOC, PCI, or comparable audit frameworks with measurable compliance outcomes.
- Hands-on familiarity with modern monitoring, ticketing, and collaboration tooling (e.g., Splunk, Datadog, PagerDuty, Site24x7, Jira, Confluence). ∙ ITIL-aligned understanding of Incident, Change, and Problem Management. ∙ Proven ability to build process structure from the ground up and translate operational data into executive-level reporting.
- Excellent written and verbal communication; equally effective with engineers, auditors, and senior leadership.
Preferred Qualifications
- ITIL v3/v4 Foundation (or higher) certification.
- Experience in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, fintech, payments).
- Experience leading or supporting M&A integration, ERP transitions, or major platform migrations.
- Background that spans hands-on technical work and senior leadership (e.g., progression from help desk through operations management).
What Success Looks Like
- Zero audit findings related to change management and operational controls.
- Sustained reduction in Sev 1 and Sev 2 incidents year over year.
- Service desk consistently meeting or exceeding SLA and CSAT targets.
- Clear, trusted operational reporting that leadership relies on to make decisions.
- A high-performing, well-developed IT operations team with low attrition and visible internal growth.