Manager, IT Operations

Working at Trail Appliances means joining an entrepreneurial-minded, driven team dedicated to delivering an exceptional customer experience. Trail Appliances is the leading independent appliance retailer in Western Canada. We’re a fast-growing company with over 500 employees in British Columbia, spread out over 11 showrooms, a Clearance Centre, and offices in Richmond and Annacis Island. Join our team of trailblazers

**Position Summary**

The IT manager is responsible for leading a small team that provides service desk, IT-infrastructure, and security support for the entire organization across multiple locations.

Able to work in a fast-paced environment, managing multiple competing priorities and assignments. They must be capable enough to balance maintaining business continuity and planning for future demand while always delivering an exceptional internal customer experience.

**Required Skills**:
**Technical Skills**:
Be the technical lead for setting priorities regarding network & cloud architecture design, development, maintenance, and ongoing evaluation of all IT systems including but not limited to LANs, WANs, VPNs, Internet, Intranet, Wireless, Virtual Machines (VM’s) and 3rd party access.

Some focus areas:

- Network infrastructure including firewalls (e.g. Palo Alto)
- Servers & Storage (On-prem & virtual)
- On-prem to cloud migrations
- Cyber-Security (data and systems access & use)
- Application management and security
- Data communications
- Unified communications network
- Office technology management
- Asset & Hardware management (e.g. laptops, PC’s, workstations, printers, mobile phones)
- Service desk functions
- Quality of work

**Leadership Skills**:

- Balancing priorities and managing tasks to completion without disrupting day to day operations.
- Taking on tasks but also assigning with clarity of understanding and deliverables by all parties involved.
- Strong coaching & mentoring skills to continuously improve team capabilities.
- Willingness to learn and share knowledge.

**Project Management & Planning Skills**:

- Vendor and strategic partner relationship development and management.
- Ability to quickly develop clear and concise project plans for use with internal teams.
- Identification and documentation of dependencies & risks.
- Strong project planning, execution & tracking skills.
- Development of department KPI’s

**Communication & Collaboration**:

- Strong communication & collaboration skills coupled with an ability to influence and inspire others even if they are not direct reports.
- Ability to quickly develop communication frameworks and content.
- Train others (Technical, Process and Operations).

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**Additional Skills & Responsibilities**:

- Assist or lead policy development, updating and maintaining standard operating procedures and governance frameworks.
- Strong working knowledge with an ability to set priorities for managing and maintaining all infrastructure systems including: VM Ware, Office 365, Microsoft AD, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, and network storage.
- Prepare and keep up to date IT department budgets.
- Update and maintain disaster recovery & business continuity plans.
- Proactively plan, coordinate, communicate, schedule, and deploy service packs and patches on all servers and workstations with mínimal downtime. This includes system upgrades and/or changes with detailed testing protocols.
- Lead coordination of all cyber-security proactive initiatives to keep company assets, infrastructure and data secure.
- Lead cyber-security response planning.
- Manage end to end lifecycle of all IT assets.
- Prepare annual employee development plans to include skills training.

**Required Skills**:

- Degree in a technical discipline, computer science or equivalent
- Minimum of 5 years of hands-on technical experience in troubleshooting hardware, software, and networks
- Minimum of 5 years of leadership or supervisory experience within IT infrastructure and service desk teams or similar
- Solid and comprehensive working knowledge of Microsoft Terminal Services and Virtual/Remote Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions
- Operational knowledge of LAN/WAN protocols such as TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, SMTP & SNMP
- Minimum 5 years of experience with data center operations, VMware, phone (PBX & VOIP) systems, and SAN environments.
- Experience with Cloud platforms (e.g. Azure)
- Experience with Cloud migrations of all types
- Experience with Cyber-security monitoring services

**Desired Skills**
- Experience with ERP, CRM system administration
- Installation, upgrading, backup and recovery
- Experience with warehouse/logistics and related IT technologies
- Working knowledge of new building and/or office construction.
- IT infrastructure planning and installation (power, data, security, workstations)
- Evidence of professional designations or certifications are a plus

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**Works With**
- Reports to: Director of Technology
- Direct reports: Helpdesk team, Sr. System