What are the responsibilities and job description for the Director Information Technology Operations position at TOPSYS IT?
Job Title: Director of IT Services
Job Type: Long-Term Contract (1-Year Initial Term with Extension Potential)
Location: Jackson, MS
Position Overview
client is seeking a Director of IT Services to provide executive-level technical leadership and operational oversight for enterprise IT Infrastructure Management (ITIM) and Delivery Services.
Reporting directly to the CIO/CTO, you will lead DOM’s daily infrastructure operations, cloud modernization initiatives, cybersecurity compliance, service desk operations, and vendor management. This role bridges executive strategy and hands-on operational leadership as DOM modernizes its enterprise workloads to AWS cloud platforms, implements federal interoperability mandates, and restructures IT service delivery.
Key Responsibilities
- Enterprise Cloud Leadership: Direct DOM’s enterprise cloud platform (AWS) including infrastructure provisioning, IAM, VPCs, RDS, S3, landing zones, disaster recovery, and cost optimization. Lead active workload migrations from legacy VMware to AWS.
- Network & Telecommunications: Oversee statewide network (LAN/WAN, wireless, unified communications, DNS provisioning, F5 BIG-IP load balancing, and firewall rules via ITS).
- IT Service Desk & End-User Support: Direct the enterprise IT service desk operations. Establish and monitor KPIs (first-contact resolution, response times, CSAT) and lead major incident response and escalation workflows.
- Infrastructure Operations: Ensure high availability, data protection, and disaster recovery across compute, storage, virtualization, and enterprise backups (Cohesity). Lead technology lifecycle refresh strategies.
- Vendor & Contract Oversight: Manage relationships, performance, SOW development, contract renewals, and escalations with cloud providers, managed service providers, and software vendors.
- Cybersecurity & Compliance: Partner with cybersecurity teams to enforce compliance with HIPAA, CMS ARC-AMPE, and Mississippi ITS security policies. Support bi-annual audits and vulnerability remediation.
- IT Service Management (ITSM) & Governance: Develop enterprise service catalogs, SOPs, executive performance dashboards, and run weekly leadership briefings.
Required Qualifications & Experience
Candidates must meet or exceed all minimum requirements below to be considered:
- Overall IT Experience: 10 years of progressive IT experience, including significant experience managing enterprise IT operations and infrastructure.
- Leadership Experience: 8 years directly supervising technical teams, managers, engineers, and support personnel.
- Cloud Infrastructure: 2 years of hands-on leadership in enterprise cloud environments, specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS) (EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, RDS, Landing Zone).
- Enterprise Networking: 2 years of experience with LAN/WAN, DNS, load balancing (F5 BIG-IP), wireless infrastructure, and telecommunications.
- Service Desk Management: 2 years leading IT service desk operations, SLA management, major incident management, and customer satisfaction tracking.
- Vendor & Procurement Support: 2 years overseeing technology vendors, contract management, SOW creation, and procurement processes.
- Infrastructure & Monitoring: 2 years managing observability/APM tools (Dynatrace) and enterprise backup/data protection platforms (Cohesity).
- Cybersecurity & Governance: 2 years applying cybersecurity principles, compliance frameworks, and operational governance in a regulated environment.
- Communication: 2 years of experience translating complex technical topics into business-level executive communications.
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, MIS, or a related field (or equivalent work experience).