Director of IT Services

Location: Jackson, Mississippi

Work Arrangement: 100% Onsite remote candidates will not be considered

Schedule: Monday Friday, 8:00 AM 5:00 PM CST

Contract Term: October 19, 2026 October 18, 2027

Education: Bachelor s degree or equivalent experience

On-Call: Required for critical incidents and planned maintenance

Position Overview

The Mississippi Division of Medicaid is seeking an experienced Director of IT Services to provide executive-level leadership and operational oversight for enterprise infrastructure, cloud services, networking, service desk operations, cybersecurity coordination, vendor management, and technology modernization initiatives.

Reporting to the CIO and/or CTO, this individual will play a key role in maintaining reliable IT operations while guiding the agency s transition from legacy infrastructure to modern, secure, cloud-based services.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead daily enterprise IT infrastructure and service-delivery operations.
• Manage AWS cloud services, including infrastructure provisioning, monitoring, governance, cost optimization, capacity planning, and security.
• Oversee enterprise cloud migration and modernization initiatives.
• Direct network, voice, telecommunications, LAN/WAN, wireless, DNS, load-balancing, remote-access, and firewall-related operations.
• Lead IT service desk and end-user support teams.
• Establish and monitor KPIs for response time, resolution time, backlog, first-contact resolution, and customer satisfaction.
• Manage major incidents, service disruptions, root-cause analysis, and corrective-action planning.
• Oversee infrastructure platforms, including compute, storage, virtualization, operating systems, backups, monitoring, and disaster recovery.
• Partner with cybersecurity teams to ensure compliance with HIPAA, CMS, Mississippi ITS, and applicable federal security requirements.
• Manage technology vendors, cloud partners, managed service providers, contracts, SOWs, deliverables, and escalations.
• Support procurement activities, proposal evaluations, contract negotiations, and vendor selection.
• Establish ITSM governance for incident, problem, change, request, configuration, and service-level management.
• Develop service catalogs, SOPs, operational dashboards, executive reports, and compliance documentation.
• Lead and develop technical teams, managers, engineers, and support personnel.
• Participate in leadership meetings, executive briefings, and weekly status reporting.
  
  

Required Qualifications

• 10 years of progressive IT experience, including enterprise IT operations and infrastructure management.
• 8 years of leadership or management experience overseeing technical teams, managers, engineers, and support personnel.
• 2 years managing enterprise AWS environments, including EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and Landing Zone architectures.
• 2 years working with enterprise networking, including LAN/WAN, DNS, load balancing, wireless infrastructure, and telecommunications.
• 2 years working with enterprise monitoring and observability platforms.
• 2 years managing IT service desk operations, incident management, service levels, and customer satisfaction.
• 2 years managing technology vendors, contracts, SOW development, and procurement activities.
• 2 years managing enterprise backup and data-protection solutions.
• 2 years applying cybersecurity, compliance, and IT governance principles in regulated environments.
• Strong executive communication skills with the ability to translate technical issues into clear business-level updates.
• Bachelor s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or a related discipline; equivalent professional experience may be considered.
  
  

Technology Environment

• Cloud and Infrastructure: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, VMware, Cohesity
• Identity and Security: Active Directory, Entra ID, Auth0, Cloudflare
• Networking: F5 BIG-IP, Cisco Meraki, DNS, firewalls, LAN/WAN
• Monitoring: Dynatrace, CloudWatch
• Applications and Integration: MarkLogic, Cloverleaf, FHIR APIs
• DevOps and Collaboration: GitLab, SharePoint, Smartsheet
• Service Management: Mississippi ITS Service Center
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• State or federal government IT experience, preferably within Medicaid, healthcare, or human services.
• Experience with healthcare interoperability, FHIR APIs, and federal healthcare data-exchange standards.
• Experience supporting HIPAA and CMS ARC-AMPE compliance.
• Experience leading on-premises-to-cloud migrations.
• Knowledge of identity and access management platforms.
• Experience with NoSQL databases and healthcare integration engines.
• Familiarity with infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices.
• AWS certification such as Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator, or Cloud Practitioner.
• ITIL v4 Foundation or higher certification.
• PMP or comparable project-management certification.
• Master s degree in a technology or management discipline.
  
  

Additional Requirements

• Must be available for after-hours support during critical incidents, major system events, and planned maintenance.
• Critical-incident response time must not exceed 30 minutes.
• Occasional in-state or out-of-state travel may be required.
• Must pass the State of Mississippi s background-screening requirements.
• Must comply with HIPAA, CMS, Mississippi ITS, confidentiality, and information-security requirements.