Head of IT

Cerebras Systems•Sunnyvale, CA

About The Position

We are hiring a Head of IT to build and run the internal technology backbone of a company that is scaling quickly and operating at the edge of AI hardware and software. This is not a steady-state IT leadership job, It is a build-and-scale role for someone who thrives when the ground is moving. You will own the systems that Cerebras employees, contractors, and executives rely on every day: laptops, identity, SaaS, networking, collaboration, endpoint security, internal support, and the IT controls that a company of our maturity needs to have in place. You will keep a highly technical, impatient engineering population unblocked while hardening the environment to standards expected of a company at our stage, including SOX-grade ITGCs and SOC 2.

Requirements

10+ years in corporate IT with at least 5 years leading IT at a high-growth technology company, including experience scaling through 2-5x headcount growth.
Direct hand-on experience with AI coding agents, LLM’s, scaling operations with AI supporting tooling.
Hands-on experience operating IT in an environment subject to SOX ITGCs or equivalent control frameworks, including working directly with internal and external auditors.
Strong technical depth across identity (Okta, Entra), MDM ( Jamf , Intune ), networking, and modern endpoint security. You can go toe-to-toe with your engineers, not just manage them.
Track record of building IT teams that engineering respects.
Ability to move quickly without breaking compliance posture. You know where a manual process is fine for now and where it is not.
Good judgment on buy-vs-build and on when to automate vs. when to ship a process and iterate.
Direct, clear communicator, comfortable briefing the CEO, CFO, and Audit Committee.

Nice To Haves

Experience with hardware labs, manufacturing, hardware engineering etc.
Experience supporting AI/ML research organizations or semiconductor and hardware engineering teams.
Exposure to global expansion, including EMEA and the Middle East.
Experience working in environments with sensitive IP and export-control considerations.

Responsibilities

Global IT strategy, roadmap, and budget across corporate IT, end-user computing, collaboration, identity, and internal networking.
Scaling the IT organization as headcount grows, including hiring, leveling, and building regional coverage across US , EMEA, and APAC.
Identity and access management: SSO, MFA, lifecycle automation, least-privilege, and joiner-mover-leaver workflows across a fast-changing org.
Endpoint fleet management across macOS, Windows, and Linux, with zero-touch provisioning, MDM, patching, and a hardened baseline that works for AI research workflows.
SaaS governance: rationalizing and integrating the SaaS portfolio, running vendor selection, contracts, renewals, and spend control.
Corporate networking, Wi-Fi, VPN/ZTNA, and office buildouts as sites open and expand.
Executive support for leadership, board, and investor-facing interactions.
IT service management: ticketing, SLAs, on-call, knowledge base, and employee-experience metrics.
IT controls and audit readiness, partnering with Security, Legal, and Finance.
Business continuity, disaster recovery, and incident response for corporate systems.