Assistant Manager - IT Service Desk; Des Moines

This person will lead the Level 2 Service Desk team responsible for delivering high-quality escalation support, subject matter expertise, and event support across the organization. Oversees daily operations, workforce planning, service delivery, and employee development to ensure timely issue resolution and a positive colleague experience. Provides coaching and guidance to team members, resolves escalated issues, and drives continuous improvement, automation, and AI efforts to enhance service effectiveness and efficiency.

Essential Functions

Team Leadership (50%)

• Directly leads the Level 2 Service Desk team, ensuring achievement of team goals and operational objectives.
• Provides coaching, feedback, and performance management, including salary administration, disciplinary action, and conflict resolution.
• Coaches technicians on career growth and skill development, including development plans, progression along the IT Service Desk career path, and cross‑training.
• Leads hiring and onboarding of contract and full‑time staff, and supports workforce planning and employee engagement activities.
• Fosters an inclusive, customer‑focused environment that promotes accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Conducts performance reviews and creates development plans to strengthen capabilities and support retention efforts.

Operational Execution & Service Delivery (25%)

• Oversees daily Level 2 operations, ensuring escalated requests are handled efficiently and service level expectations are achieved.
• Monitors team workload, staffing coverage, ticket queues, SLAs, and operational metrics in partnership with the workflow coordinators.
• Oversees Level 2 support areas, including subject matter expert duties, Teams live events, auditorium event support, and project work.
• Owns ticket escalations from Level 1 and manages escalations to Level 3 teams to ensure timely resolution.
• Allocates resources and adjusts priorities to address changing business needs and service demand.
• Produces and shares team performance reporting and metrics.

Continuous Improvement, Automation & Problem Resolution (10%)

• Identifies operational challenges, service trends, and process improvement opportunities.
• Drives the Level 2 automation and AI agenda by using ticket data and repeat issues to find and prioritize opportunities, then partners with automation, AI, and platform teams to deliver them.
• Leads team adoption of new processes, tools, and automation, and measures results such as hours saved, ticket deflection, and resolution time.
• Supports implementation of standard operating procedures and best practices that improve service quality and efficiency.

Stakeholder & Customer Support (10%)

• Serves as an escalation point for complex customer issues and service concerns.
• Partners with internal business stakeholders, global Service Desk leaders, ISR, infrastructure teams, and vendors to resolve issues and improve coverage and handoffs.
• Communicates service updates, priorities, and operational impacts to employees and stakeholders as needed.
• Builds strong working relationships that support effective service delivery and customer satisfaction.

Other Duties (5%)

• Participates in departmental initiatives, projects, and special assignments.
• Supports organizational and technology changes affecting Service Desk operations.
• Carries out Level 2 responsibilities within Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans.
• Performs additional responsibilities as assigned.

• 5+ years of information technology, technical support, or service desk experience demonstrated through one or a combination of work experience, military experience, training, or education.
• Demonstrated leadership and employee development capabilities.
• Experience supporting…