About This Role
This leadership role involves overseeing technology innovation and day-to-day operational security and IT platforms for a growing network of schools. The Director will manage a 30-plus person IT team and coordinate outside vendors, ensuring high standards of data security, scalability, and alignment with educational needs. The role balances operational excellence with strategic vision to scale AI initiatives and drive transformative technology adoption.
Responsibilities
- Lead, mentor, and scale the 30-plus person IT team, fostering technical excellence, professional development, and cross-functional collaboration
- Oversee the organization’s complete technology stack, cloud architecture, network infrastructure, and helpdesk operations to ensure 99.9% uptime and stability
- Act as the primary point of contact for external vendors and service providers, ensuring seamless service delivery and high-level support for the distributed school network
- Work alongside security leadership to maintain a robust defense, including endpoint protection, identity access management, zero-trust architecture, and disaster recovery
- Manage the annual IT budget and negotiate enterprise agreements to maximize ROI on all software and hardware investments
- Establish Enterprise AI Guardrails, including data privacy and IP protection; evaluate AI platforms for compliance; and proactively mitigate Shadow IT by centralizing rogue AI usage into secure, approved workflows
- Partner with executive leadership to identify high-ROI use cases that embed AI into daily cross-functional workflows
- Lead enterprise change management initiatives, including designing training programs and prompting playbooks to transform staff into AI-fluent power users
- Establish clear metrics and KPIs to measure the operational velocity, cost-savings, and revenue impact of deployed technology and AI tools across all departments
Requirements
- Proven ability to lead, mentor, and scale a large (30+ person) IT team, effectively delegating tasks and driving professional development
- Deep technical knowledge of network architecture (TCP/IP, VLAN, routing), cloud infrastructure, and data storage/backup/disaster recovery
- Ability to design AI policies, mitigate "Shadow IT," and lead enterprise-wide initiatives that move AI from experimentation to production
- Strong analytical problem-solving skills with the ability to troubleshoot, maintain, and repair district-wide hardware/software systems while ensuring 99.9% uptime
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills; ability to translate complex technical concepts and AI roadmaps for district leadership, faculty, and staff
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field
- Valid AZ IVP Fingerprint Clearance card (can be obtained post-offer)
