Director of IT

Emergence Software

8d•$140,000 - $175,000•Remote

About The Position

Emergence is hiring its first dedicated IT hire. This is a foundational role: you will build the portfolio IT function from the ground up, serving as the primary owner of IT across our holding company and portfolio companies. You will work closely with a fractional senior IT/Security advisor who owns the architecture with you, and a managed service provider for day-to-day delivery. You are not expected to run every company's IT — you are expected to know the portfolio well enough to centralize what creates leverage across companies, leave alone what a company already does well, and know the difference.

Requirements

6-10 years in hands-on IT operations, systems administration, or MSP/consulting delivery, with at least 3 in an IT leadership role
Experience running IT across multiple companies, clients, or business units at once — not a single-company environment, however well run
Experience owning the IT workstream of an acquisition — due diligence, Day 1 readiness, and post-close systems rationalization and migration
Deep understanding of tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized IT delivery; you are a vocal advocate for what works well and what doesn’t
Fluent in identity and access operations (Okta, Entra, JumpCloud, or similar): SSO, provisioning, lifecycle workflows
Comfortable walking into a company with no documentation and systematically mapping what exists
Strong vendor and license management instincts: contracts, renewals, SLAs, consolidation
You build the playbook rather than execute one handed to you
Excellent business stakeholder management skills - you can professionally engage at all levels of the organization

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in a PE portfolio or holding company
Admin depth in both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 (we run both today)
Experience in regulated segments like healthcare, finance, or defence where compliance is integral to IT operations

Responsibilities

Run the IT workstream for every acquisition: inventory the stack, map access, stand up accounts and devices, wire the company into Emergence systems
Build the Day 1-100 integration playbook this function currently lacks, then run it at roughly three closes a quarter
Build and operate the joiner/mover/leaver standard across the portfolio, including offboarding completeness
Operate the identity platform after selection and rollout (selection is in-flight, informed by a portfolio audit underway)
Own the living inventory of tools, accounts, admin credentials, licenses, and renewal dates that every consolidation and security decision depends on
Manage the MSP relationship and SLA for portfolio companies that consume central IT delivery
Own vendor contracts, renewals, license consolidation, and portfolio volume pricing
Build the back-end connections that feed our cross-portfolio data platform