IT Operations Engineer

Role & Team

We're looking to hire an IT Operations Engineer with a builder's mindset, profound curiosity and legendary communication abilities to own internal IT at gaiia. This is a true one-person IT army role: you'll build and run the function end to end, creating the systems and processes that keep our team productive, secure, and supported. As the first hire in this role, you'll report directly to the CTO and have the opportunity to shape the IT function while growing your career as gaiia scales.

You will be the go-to person for: access and permissions, device management, internal support, and the automations that make all of it run smoothly. You will also work closely with Engineering Leadership and the Platform squad on security and compliance topics, including our SOC 2 program.

In short: you'll handle internal support requests while also building systems and automations that reduce recurring issues and make you and the team more productive.

What is your team working on?

Our internal IT stack includes Rippling (HRIS & MDM), Apple Business Management, CrowdStrike, Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, and gaiia's Workflow Builder.

More pragmatically, you will:

• Administer our SaaS tools: users, groups, licenses, billing and settings.
• Manage access and permissions: process access requests, maintain SSO and Google Groups, and keep access least-privilege and auditable.
• Run the IT side of onboarding and offboarding: make sure every new hire is ready on day one, and every departure is fully revoked across all our tools, with the right evidence.
• Own our laptop fleet: maintain our Rippling MDM and Apple Business Manager setup (security settings, app deployments, OS updates), troubleshoot device issues, and handle wipes and buybacks.
• Be our internal helpdesk: be the first line of support for teammates, from locked laptops to broken SSO.
• Support security and compliance: SOC 2 evidence, access reviews, device compliance, vendor inventory in Drata, and yearly IT policy reviews.
• Most importantly: Build automations that make your life easier. Workflows, AI skills and autonomous agents, and anything else that turns recurring requests into self-serve experiences.

Here are some actual projects you would have worked on recently:

MDM pipeline overhaul: You'd have diagnosed why newly purchased laptops were shipping without their security software, traced it to broken packages and an overly narrow assignment rule, and rebuilt the deployment so every device is protected from first boot. You'd then have documented the whole purchase-to-managed-device pipeline as a reference anyone can use to debug and audit our fleet.

Self-serve access requests: You'd have replaced ad-hoc DMs with a Slack workflow, so every access request is captured, routed and traceable, making both day-to-day support and SOC 2 audits much easier.

Employee offboarding flow: You'd have turned offboarding into a repeatable checklist driven by our vendor inventory, so every access is revoked quickly, shared credentials are rotated, devices are recovered or wiped, and audit evidence is generated along the way.

Qualifications

• At least five (5) years of experience in IT administration or IT operations, ideally in a remote-first SaaS company.
• Automation capabilities are a must: you've built real workflows with tools like Zapier, n8n, Slack Workflow Builder or Retool, and you're comfortable with APIs, webhooks and light scripting. This will be useful as you automate tasks in gaiia's (epic) Workflow Builder.
• Hands-on experience with macOS device management (Rippling, Jamf, Kandji or similar) and Apple Business Manager.
• Strong admin experience with common startup tools: Google Workspace (SSO/SAML, groups), Slack, Notion and password managers.
• You are very familiar with AI: you use AI tools daily and know how to set up MCPs, build AI skills and workflows that remove repetitive work.
• A security-first mindset and the professionalism that comes with high-trust admin access.
• You have a service-oriented and collaborative personality, with clear, patient communication for technical and non-technical teammates alike.
• You take ownership, bring order to fuzzy problems and document what you build.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience in cybersecurity.
• Experience with compliance frameworks and tooling (SOC 2, ISO 27001, Drata, Vanta or similar).
• Experience in software QA.
• Experience in software development.

Salary

At gaiia, we have a transparent salary philosophy and a robust evaluation and compensation framework. It translates to a fair and impartial model where salaries are published internally, healthy discussions about compensation and performance can exist, and taboos are removed.

The salary range for this role is $85,000-$115,000.

Benefits

• Flexible 25 days vacation.
• Stock Options Plan.
• Group Insurance.
• Telemedicine.
• Life and Health Spending Accounts.
• Group Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP).
• Flexible working hours & all-remote work.