Director of Support Services
About The Position
The Director of Support Services owns end-user support services for Wilson Sonsini, with direct accountability for the outsourced Service Desk, deskside support technicians across the firm's 17 offices, the Technical Training group, and technical communications. The role is directly responsible for day-to-day support for firm attorneys and business professionals, from first contact through resolution. This is a hands-on support services leadership role focused on end-user experience and high-volume, multi-location operations. The Director brings operational discipline and a customer-first mindset, coordinates resources around shared goals, and ensures responsive, high-quality, consistent support across offices. The position is available on a hybrid or fully virtual work schedule. The Director oversees Service Desk and deskside operations, vendor performance, customer and stakeholder relationships, onboarding and technology enablement, technical training and communications, support governance, incident management involvement, staffing and coverage, budgets, and the hiring and development of support teams. The position is based primarily in Palo Alto, though other locations may be listed.
Requirements
- Self-driven, takes ownership, and independently executes work to completion.
- Positive, can-do attitude and proactive engagement with leadership as an advocate for end users.
- Proven experience directly managing multiple technical groups to deliver support services across multiple locations and time zones.
- Strong command of support operations fundamentals, including SLA management, ticketing systems, escalation models, and staffing and coverage planning.
- Demonstrated success managing outsourced support vendors and holding them accountable to contracted performance.
- Experience identifying technical support and training gaps and implementing user-facing solutions.
- Familiarity with AI-enabled support tooling and a track record of driving automation adoption within a support function.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including communicating support performance to senior stakeholders.
- Strong leadership skills, including hiring, coaching, and performance management of support personnel.
- Bachelor's degree in information technology, business administration, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- At least 8 years of progressive experience in end-user support leadership, including managed services and geographically dispersed support teams.
- Experience with ServiceNow or an equivalent ITSM platform.
- Accustomed to providing a white-glove support experience as standard practice.
Nice To Haves
- Experience in a law firm or professional services environment.
- Familiarity with legal industry applications.
- ITIL certification, Lean Six Sigma certification, or related certifications.
Responsibilities
- Own day-to-day performance of the outsourced Service Desk and hold the vendor accountable to contracted SLAs, quality standards, and cost targets.
- Directly manage deskside support technicians across the firm's 17 offices, ensuring consistent coverage, response times, and service quality.
- Standardize support processes, ticket handling, and escalation paths across Service Desk and deskside teams.
- Use ticket data, reporting, and analytics to identify trends, reduce recurring issues, and improve support performance.
- Serve as the executive escalation point for support issues unresolved at first or second tier and drive them to resolution.
- Build trusted relationships with attorneys, business professionals, and internal stakeholders, serving as a primary escalation point and advocate for support services.
- Promote high satisfaction through proactive engagement, structured communication, and effective issue resolution.
- Represent the end-user perspective internally and translate recurring support issues into service gaps and improvement opportunities.
- Oversee onboarding and technology enablement so new attorneys and business professionals become productive quickly.
- Direct the Technical Training group and ensure its content and outputs are high quality, professional, polished, and current with the firm's technology needs.
- Develop and execute comprehensive communication strategies and tactics to engage employees in support of business initiatives.
- Oversee technical communications about outages, deployments, technical changes, and known issues, ensuring clarity and inclusion of necessary related materials.
- Partner with Technical Training to develop resources addressing gaps identified by Service Desk ticket trends.
- Partner with practice groups or firm leadership to identify training priorities related to new technology rollouts.
- Drive compliance with internal governance models and quality standards across support teams.
- Participate as a key stakeholder in incident management for support-related outages affecting end users.
- Set staffing, scheduling, and coverage models across offices and time zones to match demand, including peak periods, offsite events, and after-hours needs.
- Benchmark support operations against industry standards and implement best practices.
- Manage accountability for the support services budget, including vendor contracts, staffing costs, and tooling expenses.
- Hire, coach, and develop high-performing support resources, fostering accountability and continuous growth.
- Set group expectations and balance workloads and coverage across offices to sustain team optimization and reliability.
- Support talent development, succession planning, and effective workforce utilization.
- Identify and address knowledge and skill gaps within teams.
- Set team goals, performance standards, and accountability measures that improve service outcomes.
Benefits
- Highly competitive salary and benefits package.
- Discretionary year-end merit bonus based on performance.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
