Senior Director of IT Operations

What you will be doing:

• Lead all operational functions of IT including Help Desk, Tier 1 application support, on-prem and cloud infrastructure, networking, and release coordination. 

• Establish and monitor team performance metrics for ticket volume, response/resolution time, system uptime, and SLA adherence. 

• Develop and maintain a structured change management process for releases and infrastructure changes. 

• Ensure systems and support processes are aligned with business continuity goals and remote workforce requirements. 

• Serve as the final escalation point for all end-user service incidents, partner with Security, DevOps, and Engineering teams for resolution. 

• Collaborate with the CIO to set direction and priorities for IT operations aligned with strategic business needs. 

• Manage team leaders and staff across Help Desk, Infrastructure, and Network Operations; provide ongoing coaching, feedback, and development plans. 

• Direct and oversee IT asset lifecycle management, including tracking, deployment, and decommissioning. 

• Drive operational improvements by automating recurring support tasks and modernizing system monitoring and alerting. 

• Ensure proper release management processes are in place to minimize production incidents and business disruption. 

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align IT operations with security policies and compliance requirements. 

• Own IT operational responsibilities related to SOX and ITGC’s; oversee evidence collection, control execution, and audit response support. 

• Serve as the primary operational liaison during internal and external IT audits. 

• Contribute to IT budgeting and forecasting by providing operational resource and infrastructure cost insights. 

• Develop clear documentation of procedures and ensure knowledge base content remains current. 

• Support regular status reporting and incident reviews with executive leadership. 

• Maintain strong vendor relationships for IT support tools, infrastructure services, and hardware procurement. 

• Perform other duties as assigned. 

What you already have:

Education, Experience, and Licensing:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, or related field. 

• 8–10 years of experience in IT operations, with at least 5 years in a leadership role managing distributed teams. 

• Proven success leading enterprise-scale help desk, infrastructure, and networking teams. 

• Experience supporting hybrid environments (cloud/on-prem) and remote-first workforce models. 

• Prior experience in the P&C insurance industry or other regulated environments strongly preferred. 

• Strong knowledge of IT operations frameworks (e.g., ITIL), service management platforms (Freshservice preferred), and SLA-driven support models. 

• Demonstrated experience managing large-scale ticketing environments and infrastructure with minimal downtime. 

• Direct experience managing IT’s role in SOX compliance, including execution of ITGC’s and audit coordination. 

• Familiarity with Microsoft 365, Azure AD, Azure networking, and release planning in production systems. 

• Experience with vendor management and service level agreements for infrastructure and tool providers. 

Qualifications/Skills and Competencies:

• Strong background in systems, networking, and support operations. 

• Demonstrated leadership of multi-functional technical teams (support, infra, networking). 

• Comfortable setting KPI’s and accountability frameworks for help desk and infrastructure teams. 

• Solid understanding of IT ticket management systems (Freshservice, ServiceNow, or similar). 

• Effective communicator with the ability to provide executive-level briefings and lead cross-team incident reviews. 

• Excellent planning and prioritization skills; able to balance support demands with long-term infrastructure work. 

• Experience supporting fast-paced environments with both legacy and modern systems. 

• Proficient in Microsoft 365 applications (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint). 

• Desire to live Slide's Core Values.