Head of Technical Operations (TechOps)

Formlabs•Somerville, MA

7d•Onsite

About The Position

Formlabs is hiring a Head of Technical Operations (TechOps) to own the infrastructure and security foundations used across the company. This is a combined leadership and hands-on player-coach role, leading a global team of seven across network administration, systems administration, help desk, and cybersecurity. The role supports offices in Somerville, Germany, Budapest, and Shenzhen and is part of the Systems team, which enables Formlabs teams with enterprise applications, infrastructure, data, AI, and security. The position is based onsite at the Somerville, Massachusetts office and reports to the CIO. The role owns Formlabs’ global network, on-premise servers, endpoints, IT service desk, identity and access, and cybersecurity program. It sets infrastructure and security strategy, manages vendors and budgets, improves employee IT services, and ensures systems are documented and resilient. The leader will also drive automation and AI-assisted workflows to help the team scale.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in IT infrastructure and/or security, including at least 2 years leading teams.
Hands-on expertise in enterprise networking, including routing, VPN, firewalls, segmentation, and Wi-Fi, and in server virtualization.
Practical experience building or running a cybersecurity program at a company without a large dedicated security team, including EDR, identity, vulnerability management, and incident response.
A service-oriented mindset, with experience measuring IT service quality and leading a help desk.
Proven ability to design a team staffing and sourcing model and to select, negotiate with, and hold managed service providers accountable.
Ability to translate technical risk into clear business decisions for executives and write clear policies, runbooks, and recommendations.
Experience with frameworks such as NIST CSF, ISO 27001, or SOC 2, and with IT general controls in an audit-ready environment.
Bachelor’s degree in a technical field or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience at a mid-sized company of 500–2,000 people with multiple international sites.
Experience with Cisco Meraki, Proxmox, CrowdStrike, Google Workspace, and Cloudflare.
Experience operating IT in China, including cross-border connectivity, local regulations, and remote-site support.
Familiarity with GCP and AWS security fundamentals, including IAM, logging, and network controls.
Scripting and automation skills in Python, PowerShell, Terraform, or similar, and hands-on use of AI tools in IT or security operations.
Security certifications such as CISSP, CISM, or CCNP Security.
Experience in a hardware or manufacturing company with R&D labs and lab networks.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop a team of seven across network, systems, help desk, and cybersecurity; set priorities and build technical leadership, automation, and scripting skills.
Own the Cisco Meraki network across four countries, including SD-WAN, site-to-site VPN, firewalls, segmentation, Wi-Fi, ISP circuits, cloud VPN tunnels, remote access, and China-specific connectivity and compliance needs.
Define and drive an infrastructure and security roadmap balancing reliability, risk, cost, and user experience, and communicate it in business terms to the CIO, CFO, and company leadership.
Own on-premise Proxmox compute and its services, including lifecycle, patching, monitoring, backups, tested restores, and disaster recovery; determine what remains on-premise versus moves to cloud or SaaS.
Own the cybersecurity program, including policy, risk register, vulnerability and patch management, endpoint protection, email and SaaS security, logging, data loss prevention, incident detection and response runbooks, and exercises.
Determine the team’s staffing model and service sourcing strategy, including what to build in-house versus obtain from managed service and security partners; hold partners accountable to scope and SLAs.
Own joiner/mover/leaver processes, SSO and MFA, privileged and break-glass access, and administrative hygiene across Google Workspace and core SaaS, maintaining evidence for auditors.
Ensure a fast, friendly, measurable help desk for approximately 800 employees, covering ticket SLAs, onboarding and offboarding, laptop lifecycle and MDM, conference rooms and A/V, and site support; personally handle the hardest escalations.
Replace manual, repeatable work with automation and AI-assisted workflows for provisioning, monitoring, ticket triage, and reporting.
Own the infrastructure and security vendor portfolio and budget, including contracts, renewals, licensing, hardware refresh plans, and build/buy/partner decisions.
Maintain current diagrams, inventories, runbooks, and on-call and escalation coverage so systems do not depend on a single person’s knowledge.