Job Description

Position Summary

The Service Desk is the front door to Southland's IT Infrastructure organization. It provides a consistent first point of contact for employees across corporate offices, regional offices, shops, remote locations, and active job sites.

Reporting to the Director of Support Services, the Manager, IT Support Services will build and lead the team responsible for receiving, assessing, documenting, resolving, and routing all incoming IT incidents and service requests. The team will gather the information needed to understand the business impact, provide fast first-contact resolution where appropriate, and ensure issues that require deeper support reach the correct team with complete and accurate diagnostic information.

The focus is simple: make it easy for employees to get help, restore productivity as quickly as possible, and prevent users from being passed between teams without clear ownership. Success will require strong customer service, disciplined queue management, analytical thinking, practical troubleshooting, and consistent follow-through.

You will work closely with Desktop Support, Platform Engineering, Cloud & Systems, Network, Cybersecurity, business technology teams, divisional leadership, and field operations to improve first-touch outcomes, escalation quality, service visibility, and the overall IT support experience.

Position Details

Relationship Building/Management

• Build trusted working relationships with employees, business leaders, field teams, divisional offices, and IT partners to understand support needs and recurring service pain points.
• Serve as the operational owner of the enterprise service desk experience and the primary point of accountability for intake, triage, first-level resolution, and queue health.
• Promote a customer-service culture centered on empathy, responsiveness, ownership, clear communication, and practical problem solving.
• Partner with Desktop Support and engineering teams to define clear support boundaries, escalation expectations, and handoff standards.
• Stay connected to how employees work in offices, shops, and job sites so service desk practices reflect real business urgency and operating conditions.

Service Desk Operations & First-Contact Resolution

• Lead daily service desk operations across approved intake channels, including ticket portal, email, phone, chat, and other supported contact methods.
• Ensure every ticket receives a timely first touch, accurate categorization, appropriate prioritization, clear ownership, and professional communication.
• Build a team capable of resolving common incidents and requests during the first interaction when the solution is safe, repeatable, and within the service desk's approved scope.
• Establish practical troubleshooting standards for common endpoint, access, Microsoft 365, collaboration, printing, connectivity, mobile-device, and business-application issues.
• Ensure technicians confirm the user's issue is resolved, document the outcome, and avoid premature closure solely to improve first-contact resolution statistics.
• Maintain clear procedures for urgent issues, VIP or executive support, onboarding and offboarding requests, access problems, and high-impact field or job-site interruptions.

Queue Management, Coverage & Prioritization

• Manage the enterprise ticket queue in real time, including assignment, load balancing, prioritization, backlog control, aging-ticket review, and escalation follow-up.
• Establish reliable service desk coverage across Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones, including backup and overflow coverage for absences, peak periods, and unexpected demand.
• Develop staffing schedules and operating routines that align coverage to ticket volume, business hours, recurring demand patterns, and critical field operations.
• Use business impact, urgency, user scope, location, and operational risk to prioritize work consistently rather than relying only on the requester's title or persistence.
• Ensure unassigned, misrouted, stalled, and repeatedly transferred tickets are identified quickly and given clear ownership.
• Coordinate with support and engineering leaders during ticket surges, outages, major deployments, and other events that require temporary changes to routing or staffing.

Diagnostic Quality, Escalation & Incident Support

• Define the minimum information required before a ticket is escalated, including the affected user or site, device or asset, business impact, timing, error details, troubleshooting performed, and relevant screenshots or logs.
• Coach the team to ask clear diagnostic questions, recognize patterns, distinguish symptoms from likely causes, and determine the correct resolver group.
• Ensure escalated tickets are complete, actionable, routed correctly, and accompanied by a clear explanation of what has already been validated or attempted.
• Reduce unnecessary transfers and "ticket bouncing" by strengthening service desk knowledge, ownership expectations, and cross-team escalation agreements.
• Support high-priority incident coordination by confirming scope, collecting user impact, maintaining accurate ticket records, and communicating updates through approved channels.
• Follow escalated issues through resolution when needed to ensure the user receives a complete outcome and the service desk learns from the final fix.

Customer Experience, Knowledge & Quality

• Set and reinforce service standards for professionalism, listening, empathy, plain-language communication, expectation setting, and follow-through.
• Establish quality-assurance practices such as ticket reviews, call or chat reviews where appropriate, customer feedback analysis, and coaching based on observed behaviors.
• Develop and maintain clear knowledge articles, troubleshooting guides, decision trees, response templates, and escalation playbooks that support consistent first-level resolution.
• Create feedback loops with Desktop Support and engineering teams so resolved escalations are converted into reusable service desk knowledge when appropriate.
• Improve self-service for common requests while ensuring employees can still reach a knowledgeable person when automation or documentation does not meet their needs.
• Use customer feedback and complaint trends to correct service gaps, improve communication, and recognize team members who consistently deliver strong support.

ITSM, Analytics, Automation & Continuous Improvement

• Manage service desk use of ITSM processes, including ticket categorization, prioritization, assignment, escalation, incident management, request fulfillment, service catalog alignment, and documentation standards.
• Establish and monitor operational measures including first-response time, first-contact resolution, time to assignment, SLA attainment, backlog, ticket age, reassignment rate, reopen rate, escalation quality, and customer satisfaction.
• Use queue data, ticket trends, and recurring contact drivers to identify training needs, staffing gaps, process failures, knowledge opportunities, and systemic technical issues.
• Provide clear operational reporting to the Director of Support Services and partner teams, including current risks, service trends, improvement actions, and results.
• Partner with IT teams to reduce avoidable ticket volume through permanent fixes, better communication, improved knowledge, automation, and changes to the user experience.
• Evaluate and responsibly apply workflow automation and AI-assisted support for intake, categorization, knowledge suggestions, routing, summarization, and trend analysis while maintaining human accountability and service quality.

Security, Compliance & Risk Support

• Partner with Cybersecurity to ensure first-contact support protects company data and follows approved identity, access, endpoint, and incident-handling standards.
• Ensure the team consistently follows identity-verification procedures for password resets, MFA support, access requests, account changes, and other sensitive actions.
• Establish clear escalation procedures for phishing, suspected compromise, lost or stolen devices, privileged-access concerns, and requests involving sensitive information.
• Reinforce secure support practices without creating unnecessary friction for employees who need help quickly.
• Maintain service desk records and procedures that support audit readiness, compliance obligations, and reliable investigation of security-related support activity.

Leadership & Team Development

• Recruit, hire, onboard, and develop a high-performing service desk team with strong customer-service instincts, analytical thinking, technical curiosity, and personal accountability.
• Set clear expectations for response quality, first-level troubleshooting, documentation, attendance, schedule coverage, communication, and ticket ownership.
• Provide regular coaching, performance feedback, skills development, and career guidance based on measurable results and observed customer interactions.
• Create a culture where technicians ask thoughtful questions, collaborate openly, learn from mistakes, share knowledge, and take pride in restoring employee productivity.
• Address performance or behavioral concerns promptly and fairly while recognizing strong service, initiative, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
• Develop training plans, cross-training, coverage depth, and succession readiness so the service desk can scale with Southland's growth and maintain consistent service during change.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in information technology, business, management, or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in IT support, service desk/help desk, end-user services, IT operations, or a related technical support environment.
• 3+ years of direct leadership experience managing a service desk, help desk, support center, ticket queue, or first-level technical support team.
• Experience recruiting, onboarding, coaching, and performance-managing customer-facing technical support staff.
• Strong understanding of ITSM practices, ticket lifecycle management, queue management, incident management, request fulfillment, prioritization, escalation, SLA/OLA management, and service reporting.
• Demonstrated ability to improve first-contact resolution without sacrificing diagnostic quality, security, documentation, or customer experience.
• Experience managing queue coverage, workloads, schedules, and service levels across multiple time zones or a large distributed organization.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret ticket data, recognize patterns, identify service gaps, and translate findings into practical improvements.
• Working knowledge of enterprise end-user environments, including Windows, macOS, mobile devices, Microsoft 365, collaboration tools, identity and access support, endpoint management, networking fundamentals, and common business applications.
• Experience creating knowledge articles, troubleshooting procedures, service desk playbooks, training materials, quality standards, and repeatable support processes.
• Strong customer-service mindset with excellent listening, written communication, verbal communication, de-escalation, and expectation-setting skills.
• Ability to explain technical issues clearly to non-technical users and communicate operational concerns effectively to technical teams and business leaders.
• Ability to partner effectively with Desktop Support, Platform Engineering, Cloud & Systems, Network, Cybersecurity, business technology teams, and divisional leadership.
• Experience with enterprise ITSM platforms, remote-support tools, knowledge-management systems, reporting dashboards, and service desk automation is preferred.
• ITIL certification or comparable service-management training is preferred; process-improvement experience such as Lean or Six Sigma is beneficial.
• Ability to operate in a high-growth, fast-moving environment supporting offices, shops, remote employees, and active job sites; occasional travel may be required.

This is a hybrid role that is available to candidates located near our active Southland locations/sites, including:

• Dulles, VA
• Laurel, MD
• Philadelphia, PA
• Whitehall, PA
• Austin, TX
• Houston, TX
• Carrollton, TX
• Fort Worth, TX
• Corpus Christi, TX
• San Antonio, TX
• Los Angeles/Garden Grove, CA
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Sacramento, CA
• Phoenix, AZ
• Las Vegas, NV
• Saratoga Springs, UT
• Vancouver, WA
• Kennewick, WA
• Redmond, OR

Benefits

As a 100% employee-owned company, we offer a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family:

• 401(k) plan with 50% company match (no cap) and immediate 100% vesting
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (100% paid for employee)
• Annual bonus program based upon performance, achievement, and company profitability
• Term life, AD&D insurance, and voluntary life insurance
• Disability income protection insurance
• Pre-tax flexible spending plans (health and dependent care)
• Paid parental leave
• Paid holidays, vacation, and personal time
• Training/professional development opportunities and company-paid memberships for professional associations and licenses
• Wellness benefits