IT Operations Lead job description

IT support — IT Operations Lead
Owns IT operations, vendors and risk for the business.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Decide which suppliers the organization depends on and what it will accept in a contract, and drop one that has stopped earning its place.
- Decide what the IT function is sized and funded to do, and win that case with the leaders who hold the budget.
- Redesign the triage model for a growing user base, balancing coverage against headcount, and defend the SLA it produces to the business.
- Set the incident response process for the organization, decide what counts as major, and use the pattern across incidents to fund prevention.
- Set how problem management works for the organization, and use trend data to justify investment in the fixes that remove the most recurring pain.
- Own the service level agreements between IT and the business, and decide which targets earn their place against what they actually cost to hold.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the IT Support Team Lead level (level 4 of 5) or equivalent
- Holds CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, ITIL 4 Foundation and Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate

REQUIRED SKILLS
Service Desk
- Ticket Triage and Prioritization — You can redesign the triage model for a growing user base, balancing coverage against headcount, and defend the SLA it produces to the business.
- Service Restoration Coordination — You can set the incident response process for the organization, decide what counts as major, and use the pattern across incidents to fund prevention.
- IT Problem Investigation and Trend Analysis — You can set how problem management works for the organization, and use trend data to justify investment in the fixes that remove the most recurring pain.
- Service Level Management — You can own the service level agreements between IT and the business, and decide which targets earn their place against what they actually cost to hold.
- User Communication and Service Experience — You can set the service experience standards for IT, and turn survey and complaint findings into funded service improvements.

Endpoint Support
- Endpoint Provisioning and Configuration — You can plan a hardware refresh or OS migration across the fleet, sequencing it to avoid disruption, and set the standard image policy.
- Remote Troubleshooting and Diagnostics — You can set the remote support tooling and standards for the desk, and step in on the faults nobody else can pin down.
- Mobile Device Management — You can design device management for a mixed fleet, keeping work data separate on personal phones, and move between platforms without stranding users.
- Patch and Update Management — You can bring an estate with legacy software and exceptions to a patched state, and design the staged rollout that keeps it there.
- Print and Peripheral Support — You can diagnose a peripheral fault end to end, through drivers, print servers and stubborn docking stations, and get the user working without a rebuild. You notice when the same model keeps failing and deal with the cause.
- Endpoint Security Operations — You can design the encryption, agent health and application control checks for the whole fleet, and hand confirmed threats to the security team with the evidence.

Identity & Access
- Identity and Account Lifecycle Management — You can set the identity lifecycle policy for the organization, including how fast an account must be disabled after departure, and answer for it in an audit.
- Access Reviews and Permission Audits — You can decide how often the organization reviews access, who owns each system, and what happens when a review is ignored.
- Directory and Group Management — You can restructure a directory that has grown messy across sites or after a merger, without breaking the systems that depend on it.
- Password and Multi-Factor Authentication Support — You can find why an account keeps locking or a factor keeps failing and fix the cause, and stop a social engineering attempt made through a reset request.

Infrastructure
- Network Connectivity Support — You can plan connectivity for a new office or remote team, and set the standards for VPN and Wi-Fi that the rest of the desk works to.
- SaaS Application Administration — You can own the administration standard for the organization's core SaaS platforms, and lead a migration or major configuration change.
- Cloud Storage and File Sharing Administration — You can set up team storage with a documented reason for each permission, and untangle folders that are shared too widely.
- IT Asset and License Management — You can own the asset and license strategy for the organization, including disposal and data-wiping compliance, and answer for it financially.
- Backup and Data Recovery Support — You can design what is backed up, how often and how far back for systems with different recovery needs, and prove the plan by rehearsing a restore.

IT Operations
- Knowledge Base and User Enablement — You can set the knowledge base standard for the desk, and run user guides or short training that cut tickets on common issues.
- IT Vendor and Contract Coordination — You can decide which suppliers the organization depends on and what it will accept in a contract, and drop one that has stopped earning its place. You get budget holders bringing IT in before they sign rather than after.
- IT Operations Reporting and Metrics — You can decide what the organization judges its IT function by, and retire measures that encourage gaming.
- IT Shift Handover and Escalation Management — You can run handover across a team or several sites so nothing falls between shifts, and set the escalation thresholds others work to.
- IT Operations Planning and Capacity — You can decide what the IT function is sized and funded to do, and win that case with the leaders who hold the budget.
- IT Change Management — You can manage a high-impact change from approval through implementation, and check that the release policy was followed.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can set the everyday habits for how work is organized and followed up across the organization, and teams you do not lead adopt the routines you introduce.
- Planning & Estimation — You can forecast work and staffing quarters ahead, and set the estimating method other teams use.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can report the organization's most exposed outcomes to its leaders as they stand, including bad news, and answer for them.
- Quality Focus — You can raise the quality bar across the organization by building the tools and habits that make the careful way the easy way.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can crack problems the organization has repeatedly failed to solve, and your approach becomes how others tackle that whole kind of problem.
- Domain Expertise — You can influence how the field is practiced beyond this organization, and your expertise settles questions that have stood open for years.
- Continuous Learning — You can set what the organization invests its learning time in, and the material and practice you create outlive your involvement.

Communication
- Communication — You can set how the organization communicates by creating the forums and norms that teams use to share information.
- Collaboration — You can remove the barriers that stop teams working together by putting in place routines and forums they use across the organization.
- Writing & Documentation — You can set the writing standard the organization works to, and documents you wrote are still in use long after you have moved on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can represent the organization in its most important relationships and set how it engages with everyone who depends on it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can set direction for the whole organization, make hard calls under real uncertainty, and carry the decisions nobody else wants to own.
- Mentoring — You can shape how the organization grows its people, and those you developed are themselves named by others as strong in their field.
- Strategic Thinking — You can shape the organization's strategy, and the bets you argued for are visible in where it ended up.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- CompTIA A+ (required from IT Support Engineer)
- CompTIA Network+ (required from Senior IT Support Engineer)
- ITIL 4 Foundation (required from Senior IT Support Engineer)
- Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate (required from IT Support Team Lead)