IT Director

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Full Time Fairfax, VA, US

The Senior IT Operations Manager serves as the organization’s primary internal technology leader, responsible for the strategy, governance, and day‑to‑day oversight of all IT operations. This role owns the full technology stack from the network edge through cloud‑hosted infrastructure and end‑user devices, ensuring systems are secure, reliable, and aligned with business objectives. The Senior IT Operations Manager directly manages a small internal IT team and maintains a close working relationship with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to deliver comprehensive infrastructure support, monitoring, and maintenance across on‑premises and Azure‑hosted environments.

This position requires a technically strong, operationally experienced leader who can balance hands‑on technical engagement with vendor management, strategic planning, and executive‑level communication.

• Own overall IT operations strategy and execution, ensuring all systems, services, and infrastructure meet organizational availability, performance, and security requirements.
• Directly supervise and develop 1–3 internal IT staff; provide day‑to‑day direction, conduct performance reviews, and support professional development.
• Define, document, and enforce IT policies, standards, and procedures across all operational domains including change management, incident management, and asset lifecycle.
• Serve as the primary internal escalation point for critical IT incidents; lead root cause analysis and drive remediation to prevent recurrence.
• Maintain and regularly test business continuity and disaster recovery plans for all critical systems.
• Develop and manage the IT operations budget, including forecasting for hardware, software, licensing, and managed services contracts.
• Report regularly to senior leadership on IT operational health, project status, risk posture, and technology roadmap.
• Work closely with executives and their business units to discover automation and development opportunities that can simplify business processes.

• Serve as the primary liaison and contract owner for the organization’s MSP relationship; manage SLAs, escalations, and ongoing service delivery performance.
• Review and approve MSP‑delivered changes to infrastructure, ensuring work aligns with organizational standards and change management processes.
• Collaborate with the MSP to plan and execute infrastructure projects including upgrades, migrations, and expansions.
• Conduct regular service reviews with MSP leadership to evaluate performance, address gaps, and align on upcoming initiatives.
• Ensure MSP staff operate within the organization’s security policies, access control standards, and compliance requirements.
• Provide architectural oversight and operational governance for the organization’s Azure environment, including Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks, storage, identity (Entra  / Azure AD), and security services.
• Guide and review cloud infrastructure design decisions, ensuring environments are optimized for cost, performance, resilience, and security.
• Oversee Azure Dev Ops, monitoring tooling, and automation pipelines in partnership with the MSP and internal staff.
• Manage Azure cost governance through tagging, reserved instances, right‑sizing, and regular spend reviews.
• Ensure hybrid connectivity between Azure and on‑premises environments (VPN, Express Route, AD sync) is properly maintained and documented.
• Oversee Microsoft 365 / Office 365 services including Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, and endpoint management through Intune.

• Maintain oversight of the full network stack from the edge (firewalls, WAN, SD‑WAN) through core switching, Wi‑Fi, and LAN infrastructure.
• Ensure physical server, storage, and data center or co‑location environments are properly maintained, documented, and under appropriate support contracts.
• Oversee patch management and…