Director, Help Desk Center of Excellence Full Time NEW

This leadership role sits at the heart of a large-scale, 24x7x365 IT support organization responsible for delivering high-quality Tier 1 service across multiple higher education clients. You will define and execute the strategy for a centralized Help Desk Center of Excellence, ensuring operational excellence, consistency, and scalability across a multi-client environment. The role blends hands-on operational leadership with strategic oversight, focusing on service quality, workforce management, and continuous improvement. You will lead distributed teams, optimize support workflows, and ensure seamless intake, triage, and escalation of incidents and service requests. Acting as a key escalation point, you will manage complex or high-impact situations while maintaining strong communication with executive stakeholders. This position plays a critical role in shaping customer experience, strengthening ITSM maturity, and enabling sustainable growth of a mission-driven support model.

Accountabilities

• Lead the end-to-end operations of a centralized, multi-client Help Desk COE delivering 24x7x365 Tier 1 support services.
• Oversee incident and service request intake, triage, routing, escalation, and communication across multiple support channels.
• Manage operational performance including queue volumes, ticket flow, SLAs, response times, staffing coverage, and after-hours support.
• Design and optimize workforce management strategies, scheduling models, and staffing plans to ensure continuous service coverage.
• Establish and maintain operational standards, KPIs, dashboards, and reporting frameworks to drive performance visibility and accountability.
• Act as escalation point for critical incidents, ensuring timely resolution and coordination across technical and operational teams.
• Drive ITSM-aligned process improvements across Incident, Request, Knowledge, and Major Incident Management.
• Partner with CIOs, client stakeholders, and internal leaders to ensure service quality, alignment, and continuous improvement.
• Lead onboarding and integration of new clients into the Help Desk operating model.
• Champion customer experience, ensuring clear, timely, and consistent communication during incidents and service disruptions.
• Foster cross-functional collaboration to improve workflows, escalation paths, and end-user support experience.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education, certifications, and relevant experience.
• 5+ years of leadership experience in a Help Desk, IT support center, contact center, or managed services environment.
• 8+ years of experience in IT operations, service delivery, or technical support roles.
• Proven experience leading remote teams in high-volume, 24x7x365 or call center-style environments.
• Strong background in workforce management, queue monitoring, SLA management, and operational reporting.
• Experience building and improving ITSM-based processes, procedures, and service delivery standards.
• Familiarity with ticketing systems, contact center platforms, reporting tools, and knowledge management systems.
• Strong communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills, including executive-level interaction.
• Ability to manage competing priorities in fast-paced, complex operational environments.
• Strong problem-solving, decision-making, and conflict resolution capabilities.
• Preferred: experience in Managed Services Provider environments and/or higher education support.
• Preferred: ITIL, HDI, or related ITSM certifications and familiarity with enterprise tools such as Microsoft 365 and identity/access management concepts.

Benefits

• Competitive pay aligned with experience and leadership scope.
• Flexible work arrangements, including remote-first and hybrid consulting opportunities.
• Robust benefits package for full-time employees (health, dental, and vision coverage).
• Paid time off and work-life balance-focused policies.
• Professional development, training resources, and certification support.
• Opportunity to contribute to meaningful work supporting higher education institutions and student success.
• Employee engagement in a mission-driven, collaborative, and values-oriented culture.

How Jobgether Works

We use an AI-powered matching process to ensure your application is reviewed quickly, objectively, and fairly against the role’s core requirements. Our system identifies the top-fitting candidates, and this shortlist is then shared directly with the hiring company. The final decision and next steps (interviews, assessments) are managed by their internal team.

We appreciate your interest and wish you the best!

Why Apply Through Jobgether?

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We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.