IT Director

Position Title: IT Director

Position Location: Remote - work virtually from anywhere in the United States

JOB SUMMARY

The IT Director owns Smart Tech Contracting's information technology function as the company scales from a small specialty contractor into a midsize, technology-driven organization. STC is growing rapidly across a fully remote national workforce. There is no internal IT team today; a managed service provider (MSP) delivers corporate IT. This role sets IT strategy, builds the internal team, owns the platforms and policies, and steadily brings in-house the capability the MSP delivers today. IT serves every STC department, office, and field team.

STC engineers, project teams, and field staff are increasingly building their own software, automations, and AI agents. The IT Director is a builder and an enabler, not a gatekeeper. Success is measured by how much faster STC staff can move safely: taking a prototype from a laptop to a supported service in days rather than weeks, securely connecting an SPI-approved AI tool to Microsoft 365 and business systems, standing up an environment in hours instead of weeks, or answering a hyperscale client's security questionnaire with confidence. Policies are owned by this role, kept practical, improved continuously, and written so the secure path is also the easiest path.

This is a dedicated leadership role. The IT Director leads the function through its leads and is accountable for their performance, owns the annual IT plan, headcount, and budget cycle, and develops, modifies, and executes company policies that affect immediate operations and have company-wide effect. Because STC is building IT from the ground up, the role is hands-on in its first phase, leading a small team covering development and DevOps, cloud and infrastructure, and security and compliance, with some roles combined early. As leads are hired, routine hands-on work tapers to involvement by exception (architecture review, major incidents, and client security escalations), and the team grows into an operating model that fits a midsize company, with outside partners used for defined, specialist work. The IT Director is a strong tactical decision-maker who handles unforeseen issues without waiting for direction, and an emerging strategic leader who spends increasing time on strategy, technology trends, and patterns across the business.

This role is NOT responsible for AI strategy or AI tool selection. Special Projects & Innovation (SPI) and the AI Program Manager lead AI adoption and the shared AI framework; IT plays the supporting role, owning the software stack, security, policy, integration, and support that framework runs on. AI enablement and adoption remain in SPI for now; as the program and the IT team mature, some of that responsibility may move into IT. This role is also not a traditional corporate IT administrator, a compliance-first governance function, or the company's sole developer or cloud engineer. It is the accountable owner for how technology is built, run, secured, and continuously improved at STC.

The IT Director reports to the President and works closely with the VP of Engineering & Technology, the AI Program Manager, the Director of the Business Management Office, department leaders, and STC's MSP.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

IT Strategy, Roadmap, and Scaling Ownership (20%)

• Translate company objectives into the annual IT plan: set operational objectives and work plans, delegate assignments to IT leads and partners, and review results to determine the success of operations.
• Own STC's IT strategy and a prioritized multiyear roadmap tied to company growth targets (headcount, revenue, service lines, and client requirements), revisited as the business changes.
• Define the IT operating model for each stage of growth: what STC owns, what partners deliver, and when each capability moves in-house.
• Make build, buy, continue, and stop decisions based on business value, total cost, risk, and support capacity; retire tools and duplicate efforts as readily as adding new ones.
• Own the IT budget, licensing, and cloud spend; report cost and value to leadership in plain terms, such as cost per active user and cost per environment.
• Lead change management as IT practices change across the company, involving department leaders and users early, piloting with real teams, and preparing people for new platforms, policies, and ways of working; measure adoption, not just publication.

Leading Leaders, Team Building, and Insourcing (20%)

• Hire, coach, and lead the initial IT team, combining roles early and sequencing hires as the business scales.
• Manage, develop, and hold accountable the IT leads, and later the managers beneath them; this is the defining accountability of the role as the team grows.
• Lead recruiting, determine headcount within plan, and maintain succession planning so no critical system or service depends on one person.
• Proactively identify and clear roadblocks for IT team members and the partners working under STC direction.
• Maintain a workforce plan that grows the team with the company, including service desk, platform engineering, and application support, and reduces reliance on the MSP over time.
• Own the MSP relationship: define responsibilities (RACI), service levels, and escalation, review performance, and restructure the agreement as services move in-house; require documented, usable handoff rather than permanent dependency.
• Engage interim consultants, audit specialists, and contract developers for defined scopes with clear deliverables and handoff.
• Build a remote team culture of service, ownership, and continuous improvement that reflects STC's core convictions.

Platform, Cloud, and Software Delivery (20%)

• Own the Microsoft Azure tenant and landing zone: management group and subscription structure separating production, test, and development, a governed sandbox for prototypes, and the identity, networking, backup, patching, monitoring, and inventory standards behind them.
• Establish a paved road from prototype to production: shared repositories, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, hosting templates (virtual machines, containers, and platform services), environments, and release and rollback, so staff building with AI coding tools can ship without reinventing infrastructure.
• Govern the application portfolio from intake through retirement; require a named business owner, backup owner, and support readiness before any tool goes into production use.
• Own the reliability of production systems the business depends on, including recovery testing.
• Provide the hosting, environments, and controls needed for client-facing software and data platforms as STC's software and service offerings grow.
• Own Microsoft 365 information architecture jointly with the Business Management Office and AI Program Manager, including site, group, and Teams structure, retention, and external sharing, as the company grows.

AI Platform Support and Business Systems Integration (10%)

• Support SPI and the AI Program Manager, who lead AI enablement, tool vetting, adoption, and training and own AI tool decisions. IT provides the secure software stack the AI program runs on and removes friction; it does not own or block AI tool decisions.
• Set up and maintain the AI platform foundations: licensing and tenant configuration for approved tools, service accounts and managed identities, connector and API access, agent publishing controls, and usage and cost telemetry.
• Own the security and data-governance guardrails for AI use, including approved models, data classification, and access rules, in partnership with SPI.
• Unblock staff by removing friction from access requests, licensing, environments, and approvals for tools SPI has vetted; measure and shorten turnaround times.
• Lead business systems integration jointly with the relevant leads, connecting ERP, scheduling, reporting, and project systems as tools come online.

Security, Compliance, and Policy (15%)

• Own STC's IT policies (acceptable use, AI and data use, access, secure development, change, incident response, and vendor risk) as living documents, co-created with the engineering, field, and business teams who use them, reviewed regularly, and improved from real use.
• Apply risk-based guardrails tiered by data sensitivity and environment, so experimentation happens freely in sandboxes while production systems and client data stay protected.
• Lead SOC 2 readiness, client security questionnaires, and evidence collection, coordinating with auditors and MSP security services.
• Own identity and zero-trust posture, including Entra ID, conditional access, device management, and privileged access.
• Define and protect the IT / OT boundary with engineering and field operations, aligned with ISA / IEC 62443 where STC systems touch client operational technology, without disrupting field work.
• Lead incident response and post-incident improvement.

Operations, Service, and Continuous Improvement (10%)

• Maintain a service catalog and support model that works for office and field users nationwide; track responsiveness and user satisfaction.
• Automate onboarding, offboarding, and access changes to keep pace with rapid hiring.
• Use automation and AI inside IT itself, such as self-service, AI-assisted support, and automated compliance evidence, and continually look for a better way to run IT in a specialty contracting business.
• Establish and assure adherence to IT budgets, schedules, work plans, and service performance requirements; allocate budget, staffing, and methods efficiently.
• Report regularly to leadership on roadmap progress, cost, risk, and service performance.

Stakeholder Leadership and Influence (5%)

• Regularly work with executives, directors, and department leaders on matters spanning functional areas, divisions, and clients, including client-facing security and technology discussions.
• Change the thinking of, or gain acceptance from, others in sensitive situations (policy changes, tool retirements, access decisions) without damage to the relationship.
• Represent IT on cross-department initiatives with SPI, the Business Management Office, and operations, making IT a partner in how STC works rather than a service at arm's length.

Completion of Assigned Tasks and Deliverables on Time and on Budget.

Performs Other Related Duties as Assigned

POSITION REQUIREMENTS (EXPERT / ADVANCED LEVEL FOR ALL THE FOLLOWING)

• Demonstrated experience building or scaling an internal IT function through rapid growth, ideally from small to midsize, including moving capability in-house from a managed service provider.
• Expert knowledge of Microsoft Azure, including landing zones, management groups and subscriptions, Azure Policy, networking, backup and recovery, and cost management.
• Expert knowledge of Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, including identity, conditional access, device management (Intune), SharePoint and Teams architecture, and external collaboration.
• Strong knowledge of DevOps and CI/CD (Azure DevOps and / or GitLab), infrastructure as code (Terraform or Bicep), containers, and modern application hosting, with the ability to review architecture and challenge technical decisions.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise AI tooling and agent deployment, including Microsoft Copilot, Claude, or similar platforms, connectors and APIs, service identities, data governance, and usage and cost monitoring.
• Strong knowledge of security frameworks and client assurance, including SOC 2, NIST CSF or CIS Controls, security questionnaires, and audit evidence.
• Strong knowledge of application lifecycle management: intake, ownership, release, support, recovery, and retirement.
• Skilled in writing practical, risk-based policy that enables speed and innovation while meeting security and client requirements.
• Skilled in IT budgeting, licensing, cloud cost management, and investment decisions.
• Skilled in recruiting, coaching, and growing technical leads and teams in a remote environment.
• Skilled in managing MSPs and vendors, including RACI, service levels, contract structure, and transition of services in-house.
• Skilled in communicating trade-offs clearly to executives, non-technical leaders, and field staff.
• Skilled at using MS Office Suite (Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams), along with exceptional organizational skills for file management.
• Ability to work hands-on (scripting, configuration, building with AI coding assistants) while leading the function.
• Ability to balance speed and control, and to say yes safely when staff want to try something new.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fully remote, fast-scaling organization through clear communication, self motivation, and strong organizational discipline.
• Ability to communicate effectively in both oral and written form with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to follow company and site safety requirements.
• Ability to work under pressure and meet close deadlines.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

The following physical demands must be met by the employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

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