IT Manager (Remote Employee Experience & Operations)

Players Health•Edina, MN

34d•$90,000 - $130,000•Remote

About The Position

Players Health is seeking an IT Manager for Remote Employee Experience & Operations. This role is crucial for shaping the IT experience for all employees in a remote-first, sports insurance company. The IT Manager will own the end-to-end employee IT experience, from device setup to daily issue resolution. This position involves leading IT strategy execution, infrastructure, and security for a distributed team, managing vendor relationships, and optimizing IT processes and budget. The role offers significant opportunities for growth and the chance to influence the company's IT strategy and technology stack. This position reports to the Chief People Officer and collaborates with fractional leadership for product/technology strategy and CISO for security.

Requirements

7+ years of progressive IT experience, including vendor/outsourced-support management.
Proven experience in cybersecurity, compliance, and risk management fundamentals.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office 365 and general digital-tool fluency, including comfort adopting new/AI-enabled tools.
Demonstrated experience designing or building out a remote/distributed work experience.
A builder and owner mentality, someone who takes initiative, sees gaps, and builds solutions rather than waiting to be told what's broken.
A genuine team player who enjoys working directly with people, this role interacts with employees constantly, and colleagues should be glad to see them show up, not dread it.
Demonstrated ability to work productively and asynchronously in a remote environment, with proactive, clear communication across email, IM, and virtual meetings.
Proficient with Microsoft 365, Azure, and supporting a mixed PC/Mac environment; familiarity with Slack and SharePoint administration.
Strong written communication, including the ability to translate technical information into clear, easy-to-follow documentation and employee-facing guides (SharePoint resources, SOPs, how-tos).
May require limited home storage space for a small amount of IT hardware/equipment used for testing and quality assurance ahead of company-wide rollouts (most inventory is stored with our help desk vendor; this is a smaller working set).
May require occasional local trips (e.g., to FedEx or a similar shipping carrier) to send or receive physical IT hardware.
Ability to travel occasionally for team events, collaboration, or conferences.
Must have a dedicated, safe, and secure remote work environment.
Must have the ability to work and be productive in a remote setting.
Exceptionally self-motivated with the ability to work autonomously.
Proactive communicator across email, verbal, and instant messaging.
Willingness to attend virtual meetings, primarily with camera on (we value connection and culture).
Located in or willing to work Central or Eastern Time Zone (see About this Role section for requirements specific to this posting)
Must be 18 years or older and work location must be in the United States.
Must have unrestricted work authorization to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

Experience managing IT budgets and vendor spend/contracts.
Comfort with AI tools (e.g., Claude or similar) and genuine interest in driving smart, responsible AI adoption across a team.
Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field, a plus.
Experience partnering with a fractional or outsourced CISO/security function.
Experience building internal documentation hubs or knowledge bases (SharePoint or similar).
Excellent leadership, communication, and negotiation/conflict-resolution skills, with the ability to hold external vendors accountable diplomatically but firmly.
Strong emotional intelligence and cross-departmental relationship-building, especially with HR given shared ownership of onboarding/offboarding.
Comfortable driving vendor accountability and IT process improvement with minimal oversight in a remote environment.
A genuine desire to create an outstanding employee experience across a remote and distributed team. This role sees IT as a service to people, not just a set of systems to maintain.
Builder and growth mindset: resourceful, solutions-oriented, and energized by solving problems and improving workflows and organization, not just maintaining the status quo.

Responsibilities

Own the relationship with offshore and U.S.-based help desk vendor partners, serving as the primary escalation point and accountability owner for service quality.
Set and monitor SLAs and KPIs for vendor-delivered support (response time, resolution time, backlog, CSAT), holding vendors accountable to contracted terms.
Manage vendor contracts, invoicing cycles, and renewals, partnering with Finance on procurement.
Run regular service reviews with vendor partners, using ticket trend data to drive accountability and improvement plans.
Build clear escalation paths so issues vendor tiers can't resolve reach the right internal owner quickly.
Own end-to-end IT onboarding and offboarding: account provisioning/deprovisioning, device setup, access assignment, and timely deactivation in close partnership with HR, identifying and building automation to reduce manual steps, increase consistency and minimize errors.
Design and maintain scalable, well-documented onboarding/offboarding workflows for a fully remote workforce.
Build and maintain a well-organized IT resource hub on our SharePoint intranet including branded guides, quick links, FAQs, and how-tos so employees can solve common issues and find what they need without waiting on a ticket.
Own the lifecycle of IT hardware and assets, including inventory, deployment, maintenance, refresh cycles, recovery, and secure disposal.
Keep internal SOPs and employee-facing documentation both current and clearly distinguished (internal process docs for how IT operates vs. simple, friendly guides for what employees need to know).
Be the internal owner of employee IT experience quality. The person employees can count on when vendor-tier support isn't enough, and the person making sure a remote team can keep working without disruption.
Track and report on metrics that reflect real employee productivity impact, not just ticket volume and close rates, but things like average time-to-resolution, employee downtime avoided, and where automation or process improvements are measurably helping people get back to work faster.
Build, monitor, and report on the IT budget, including vendor spend, software licensing, and hardware/device costs.
Track actuals against budget and flag variances proactively.
Maintain an inventory and lifecycle-management process for critical SaaS applications, including ownership, access, licensing, renewals, utilization, and retirement.
Evaluate vendor and tool costs on a regular cadence to ensure Players Health is getting value; identify opportunities to consolidate overlapping tools, including compliance, security-training, and policy-tracking platforms, to reduce cost and give employees one consistent place to go rather than several scattered systems.
Oversee core IT systems and infrastructure (cloud applications, SaaS stack, identity/access management, remote connectivity and network services), ensuring reliability and security for a fully remote workforce – coordinating with internal teams and vendors to resolve availability and performance issues.
Conduct periodic identity and access reviews and ensure appropriate provisioning, modification, and deprovisioning of user access based on job responsibilities and least-privilege principles.
Own cybersecurity fundamentals including access controls, SSO, MFA, endpoint security policy compliance, in partnership with our fractional CISO on strategy and execution.
Partner with the CPO to build out and continuously improve company-wide compliance training on IT and cybersecurity topics such as phishing, malware, data security, and safe AI use, ensuring content stays current and lives in one consolidated platform rather than scattered across tools.
Maintain and periodically test IT business continuity and disaster recovery plans for critical systems, services, and employee technology.
Establish and maintain a lightweight change-management process for significant changes to IT systems, configurations, security controls, and employee-facing technology.
Maintain IT policies and standards, and keep them consistently documented and accessible in one place rather than siloed in a single compliance tool.
Support the CISO, General Counsel, and business stakeholders with IT-related audits and compliance requirements, including periodic risk assessments, security questionnaires, evidence collection, and remediation of identified findings.
Own the operational rollout of AI tools across the company, including Claude adoption, ensuring smart and responsible usage.
Build and maintain well-designed Claude skills and AI agents to create efficiencies across teams over time.
Partner with the CPO on employee communications and training around AI to make AI adoption feel exciting and accessible, not intimidating.
Run proactive IT learning labs and just-in-time guidance so employees build real comfort with the tools they're given, not just a one-time onboarding mention.
Stay current on state-level AI and technology regulations relevant to employee use, flagging anything that needs legal or compliance review.
Own the technical and AV logistics for company all-hands meetings, ensuring a smooth, reliable virtual experience for a fully remote team (this meeting is highly visible, and consistent execution matters).
Actively participate in company culture and engagement activities such as virtual events, and less frequently hub-location gatherings, and volunteer/service activities, showing up in person when able.
Embody Players Health's core values day-to-day; this role interacts with the whole company regularly, and how you show up sets a visible example for others.
Lead by example, not just by title. Even without direct reports, this is a highly visible role, and the way you communicate, follow through, and treat people matters as much as the technical work.
Bring recommendations to leadership on technology priorities, tooling decisions, and where automation or AI can improve efficiency.
Execute against agreed IT strategy and identify process improvements across service delivery.
Other duties & projects as assigned.

Benefits

Medical
Dental
Vision
Life (Basic & Supplemental)
LTD
STD
401k
Hospital Confinement
Accident
Critical Illness
Enhanced Employee Assistance Program
Flexible PTO policy
10 company-paid holidays
Access to The Institutes Knowledge Group platform for ongoing insurance education and continued professional development in the industry.
Access to Claude Team.