Lead IT Applications Manager

Alchemy•San Francisco, CA

15h

About The Position

Alchemy is seeking a hands-on IT leader to build and operate business systems, own enterprise applications and integrations, manage and develop the IT team, and help company teams redesign workflows using AI. This is a player-coach role: the manager will configure applications, write integrations, debug workflows, and build automations while setting priorities, coaching engineers, managing performance, and maintaining dependable IT service. The role includes technical administration of Salesforce and connected sales tools, People Ops systems such as Rippling and ChartHop, and other business applications as needed. The manager will partner with business owners on configuration, data quality, permissions, and technical escalations; build and maintain integrations and workflows; and deliver AI-enabled agents and automations with appropriate verification and human escalation. The manager will oversee IT support, onboarding and offboarding, escalations, and operational coverage, working with engineers responsible for service desk, identity, endpoints, and office technology. In partnership with Security, they will ensure automations use least-privilege access, handle sensitive data appropriately, maintain audit trails and approval boundaries, and can be stopped or rolled back. They will own the application roadmap and spend, manage vendors and renewals, and measure improvements in reliability, turnaround time, manual work removed, and adoption.

Requirements

Deep hands-on experience administering enterprise SaaS applications and building integrations.
Strong Salesforce experience and ability to learn unfamiliar business systems.
Experience managing technical staff, including coaching, prioritization, hiring, and performance management.
Comfort staying close to implementation.
Ability to build and debug with APIs, scripting, and workflow platforms such as n8n or Okta Workflows, using sound testing and production-change practices.
Evidence of shipping AI-enabled workflows used by other people, and ability to explain what was delegated to AI, what was verified, where it failed, and how it was improved.
Experience helping a team adopt new tools and working practices, including supporting people with different starting skill levels.
Strong judgment about identity, access, employee data, and business-critical changes, including knowing when deterministic automation or a human decision is preferable.
Ability to translate business needs into technical work, explain tradeoffs, and follow through on operational details.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting People Ops, Recruiting, Finance, or Legal applications alongside sales systems.
Experience with employee lifecycle automation, identity integrations, and IT service management.
Experience building agent integrations, reusable skills, or evaluation suites with an internal AI platform.

Responsibilities

Own technical administration and improvement of Salesforce, connected sales tools, People Ops systems, and other business applications.
Partner with business owners on application configuration, data quality, permissions, and technical escalations.
Build and maintain API integrations, scripts, and workflows that connect applications, reconcile data, and automate employee and business processes.
Own integration and workflow testing, monitoring, failure recovery, and documentation.
Partner with Sales, People Ops, Recruiting, Finance, and Legal to identify workflows to redesign and deliver agents and automations that gather context, carry out authorized steps, verify results, and escalate exceptions.
Set team priorities and expectations; conduct feedback and development conversations; hire and manage performance.
Balance service coverage with project work and make tradeoffs when demand exceeds capacity.
Build alongside engineers, review their work, and develop shared tools, skills, and runbooks that raise the team's AI capability.
Make AI-assisted building and verification part of the team's delivery practices.
Oversee support quality, onboarding and offboarding, escalations, and operational coverage for service desk, identity, endpoints, and office technology; assist with difficult issues when needed.
Partner with Security on least-privilege access, sensitive-data handling, audit trails, approval boundaries, and mechanisms to stop or roll back failed automation.
Own the application roadmap and spend; evaluate tools and manage vendor relationships and renewals.
Bring application expertise in-house where doing so improves service or cost.
Measure improvements through reliability, turnaround time, manual work removed, and adoption by the teams served.