Director of IT Services (Onsite)

Director of IT Services (Onsite)

Location: Jackson, MS

The Contractor shall provide leadership and operational management across the following functional domains: Enterprise Cloud Services; Network, Voice & Telecommunications; IT Service Desk & End-User Support; Infrastructure & Operations; Cybersecurity Partnership & Compliance; Vendor & Contract Management; and IT Services Management & Governance. The scope encompasses both ongoing operational responsibilities and active modernization initiatives.

Enterprise Cloud Services:

• Provide strategic and operational leadership for the Client enterprise cloud environment, including infrastructure provisioning, platform services, identity integration, monitoring, and capacity management.
• Oversee cloud migration activities, including coordination with cloud professional services teams, managed migration vendors, and the Client internal teams.
• Establish and enforce governance for cloud adoption, architecture standards, cost management, security compliance, and operational procedures.
• Manage cloud account provisioning, vendor onboarding to cloud environments, and service ticket workflows for cloud service requests.
• Develop strategies for disaster recovery, high availability, and technology resiliency within cloud environments.
• Monitor cloud consumption, performance, and costs; identify and implement optimization opportunities.

Network, Voice & Telecommunications

• Direct enterprise network and telecommunications operations supporting statewide Medicaid business functions, including LAN/WAN, wireless, Internet connectivity, remote access, and unified communications.
• Oversee load balancing and DNS provisioning for application environments.
• Coordinate with telecommunications carriers, managed service providers, and technology vendors to ensure service-level requirements are met.
• Lead modernization of network infrastructure to support cloud services, mobility, and evolving security requirements.
• Manage network access restoration and firewall rule change requests through ITS coordination.

IT Service Desk & End-User Support:

• Lead the enterprise IT service desk and end-user support organization, including client support technicians and supervisory staff.
• Establish and monitor service desk KPIs: first-contact resolution, response times, resolution times, backlog management, and customer satisfaction.
• Oversee incident escalation, major incident management, and post-incident review processes.
• Manage ITS Service Center ticket workflows for the Client, including cloud and hosted application service categories.
• Develop self-service capabilities, knowledge management, and automation to improve employee technology experience.

Infrastructure & Operations:

• Provide leadership for enterprise infrastructure operations, including compute, storage, virtualization, operating systems, backup, monitoring, and related platforms.
• Ensure critical infrastructure is monitored and maintained to established availability and performance standards.
• Lead infrastructure modernization and technology lifecycle management, including hardware refresh strategies and capacity planning.
• Establish effective backup, recovery, redundancy, and disaster recovery capabilities.
• Manage assessment artifact collection and compliance documentation for infrastructure domains.

Cybersecurity Partnership & Compliance:

• Partner with the CIO/CTO and cybersecurity teams to ensure infrastructure and services meet state and federal security requirements.
• Ensure IT operations comply with HIPAA, CMS, and the Client ITS security policies.
• Support implementation of security controls across Cloud, Network, infrastructure, and endpoint environments.
• Participate in risk assessments, audits, compliance reviews, vulnerability remediation, and security initiatives.
• Coordinate with the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) and ITS on shared security documentation and architecture standards.

Vendor & Contract Management:

• Provide executive oversight of technology vendors, managed service providers, and cloud partners.
• Lead vendor coordination for active contracts and procurement activities, including SOW development, brand specification forms, and contract negotiations.
• Monitor vendor performance, deliverables, financial commitments, and contractual compliance.
• Manage vendor escalations and remediation of significant service issues.
• Support IT procurement processes, including solicitation review, proposal evaluation, and vendor selection.

IT Service Management & Governance:

• Establish operational governance processes for incident, problem, change, configuration, request, and service-level management.
• Develop and maintain an enterprise service catalog defining technology services, ownership, service levels, and support models.
• Develop dashboards and executive-level reporting that communicate IT service health, risks, performance trends, and improvement initiatives.
• Lead Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) development and maintenance for ITIM domains.
• Facilitate weekly status reporting and leadership coordination meetings.

Key Duties:

The contractor shall perform the following duties on an ongoing basis:

• Manage daily IT infrastructure operations, ensuring availability and performance of all enterprise systems and services.
• Triage, assign, and track service tickets submitted for Client cloud, hosting, and network services.
• Coordinate with network and systems administration teams on DNS changes, firewall rules, account provisioning, and access management.
• Lead incident response for major technology outages and service disruptions, including root cause analysis and corrective action.
• Manage vendor relationships through regular status calls, performance reviews, and escalation management.
• Review and contribute to Statements of Work, procurement documents, and contract renewals.
• Conduct interviews and manage hiring processes for infrastructure and client support positions.
• Develop and update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all ITIM service areas.
• Prepare and deliver weekly status reports to IT leadership.
• Manage bi-annual assessment artifact collection and compliance documentation.

Required Skills/Experience:

• Experience with progressive information technology, including significant experience managing enterprise IT operations and infrastructure. 10+ Years
• Experience in leadership or management, including direct supervision of technical teams, managers, engineers, and support personnel. 8+ Years
• Demonstrated experience managing enterprise cloud environments, with specific experience in Amazon Web Services (AWS) including EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and Landing Zone architectures. 2 Years
• Strong understanding of enterprise networking, including LAN/WAN, DNS, load balancing, wireless infrastructure, and telecommunications. - 2 Years
• Experience with enterprise monitoring and observability platforms. - 2 Years
• Experience managing IT service desk operations, including service level management, incident management, and customer satisfaction measurement. - 2 Years
• Experience with IT vendor management, contract oversight, SOW development, and procurement support. - 2 Years
• Experience managing data protection and backup solutions. - 2 Years
• Strong understanding of cybersecurity principles, compliance frameworks, and IT governance in a regulated environment. - 2 Years
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical issues into business-level communications for executive audiences.
• Bachelors degree in information technology, Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or a related field; or equivalent work experience. - Bachelors or Higher.

Preferred/Not Required:

• Experience working in state or federal government IT environments, preferably within a Medicaid, healthcare, or human services agency.
• Experience with CMS interoperability mandates, including FHIR APIs and federal healthcare data exchange standards.
• AWS certifications: Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator, or Cloud Practitioner.
• ITIL v4 Foundation or higher certification.
• Experience with identity and access management platforms.
• Experience with NoSQL databases and healthcare integration engines.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices.
• Experience managing technology migrations from on-premises data centers to cloud environments.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) or similar certification.
• Master's degree in a technology or management discipline.
• Experience with HIPAA Security Rule compliance and CMS ARCAMPE security requirements.