Service Desk Manager - Tier II
Department: Managed Services
Employment Type: Full Time
Location: IronOrbit - Remote
Compensation: $93,600 - $108,160 / year
Description
IronOrbit is seeking a Tier II Service Desk Manager to lead our team of Tier Two Specialists in a 24/7 Managed Services environment.
This role is ideal for a technical support leader who enjoys building high-performing teams, bringing structure and visibility to service operations, and helping talented people grow. You will combine hands-on technical judgment with operational leadership: managing workload, improving escalation quality, developing meaningful performance metrics, and creating a culture of accountability, curiosity, and collaboration.
Our support model is Front Line Analysts, Tier Two Specialists, and Tier Three Engineers. You will be responsible for making sure Tier Two owns the work appropriate to its level, escalates intelligently when Engineering is needed, and continuously builds the capability to solve more complex problems.
This is a full-time, remote position working Monday through Friday, and working hours are:
7:00AM -4:00PM Pacific Time or 8:00AM -5:00PM Pacific Time.
Key Responsibilities
What You Will Own
• Lead, coach, and develop a geographically distributed Tier Two Specialist team.
• Define, track, and publish operational metrics that make workload, utilization, backlog, SLA performance, ticket flow, and escalation quality visible to the team and leadership.
• Use data to identify workload imbalances, capacity, performance gaps, and opportunities for improvement.
• Actively manage ticket assignment and queue participation so work is distributed fairly and customer priorities are addressed promptly.
• Ensure special-project work has clear scope, deliverables, and accountability while maintaining appropriate support coverage.
• Improve Tier Two technical ownership by coaching Specialists to investigate unfamiliar problems rather than escalating prematurely.
• Establish and reinforce clear escalation standards between Analysts, Specialists, and Engineers.
• Oversee complex incidents and problem-management activity, including recurring-issue analysis and root-cause follow-through.
• Partner with Engineering, Front Line leadership, Customer Success, and other operational teams to improve service quality and cross-team handoffs.
• Build a supportive team culture where strong performance is recognized, expectations are clear, and technical learning is part of the job.
After-Hours LeadershipIronOrbit provides 24/7 technical support. Monday through Friday, after approximately 3:00 PM Pacific Time, this role assumes management responsibility for triage and ticket assignment when Front Line management coverage ends.
• Review queue conditions and incoming support demand.
• Assign and rebalance work across available resources.
• Coordinate needed escalations across Analysts, Specialists, and Engineers.
• Provide leadership during high-impact or customer-facing incidents.
• Ensure clean handoffs and communication to daytime leadership.
Skills, Knowledge & Expertise
• 3+ years of leadership experience in IT support, service desk, technical operations, or service management.
• Experience leading remote or distributed technical teams; MSP experience is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to define and use operational metrics, scorecards, KPIs, or service-management reporting.
• Strong understanding of queue management, workload balancing, utilization, SLAs, ticket aging, and escalation management.
• Strong technical troubleshooting background with enough depth to evaluate investigation quality and coach Tier Two staff.
• Experience with ITSM platforms and incident/problem-management processes.
• Strong communication, coaching, and performance-management skills.
• Sound judgment when balancing customer impact, technical complexity, staffing, and escalation decisions.
Technical Background
You do not need to be the deepest expert in every platform, but you should be comfortable leading teams that support technologies such as:
• Windows Server, Active Directory, Group Policy, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Entra ID.
• TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, and general network troubleshooting.
• VMware Horizon, Citrix, VMware, Hyper-V, and other VDI/virtualization platforms.
• RMM, endpoint-management, security, backup, and MFA technologies such as NinjaOne/Datto RMM, Intune, CrowdStrike, JAMF, Veeam, and Duo.
• Cisco, Sophos, SonicWall, or similar network and security platforms.
How We Define Success
Success in this role means building a Tier Two team where performance is visible, workloads are equitable, Specialists are engaged in the right work, escalations are thoughtful and technically useful, and people become more capable over time.
We are looking for a manager who can combine high standards with a supportive environment - someone who uses data to create clarity, coaches people to think more deeply, and helps the team take pride in owning difficult technical problems.
Preferred
• ITIL certification or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience developing service desk scorecards or KPI frameworks.
• Experience with workforce utilization/capacity reporting.
• Experience developing support staff toward advanced technical or Engineering roles.
• Familiarity with SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, CMMC, or similar compliance environments.
