Senior IT Manager

Bear Robotics•Addison, TX

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Bear Robotics is seeking a senior, hands-on IT leader to manage its IT function end-to-end. This role reports into Business Operations and serves as the company's most senior IT authority, responsible for the systems, security, and infrastructure of the U.S. business, as well as the policies and controls governing them. The position has a mandate to mature IT to public-company-grade standards, preparing the organization for external audit and IPO readiness. The successful candidate will operate as a player-coach, capable of performing tasks directly while also setting strategy, creating and enforcing policy, and building and leading a team as the company scales. This is a senior, player-coach role where for the next 12-24 months, the Senior IT Manager will be the sole IT professional, managing tasks hands-on while establishing the strategy, policies, and controls for a future team. As the function grows, this role is expected to hire, develop, and lead an IT team, with a clear growth path to a Head of IT / Director of IT position. The ideal candidate is ready for people leadership and energized to build, while also being willing to contribute as an individual contributor.

Requirements

7+ years of progressive IT experience, including end-to-end ownership of systems, security, and infrastructure for a company or business unit.
Demonstrated experience authoring, implementing, and enforcing IT policies and controls (access management, change management, security, and data handling).
Hands-on experience operating IT general controls and supporting audits (e.g., SOX ITGC, SOC 2, or ISO 27001) or clearly demonstrated readiness to establish these from scratch.
Strong information security background: IAM/SSO/MFA, endpoint security and MDM, least privilege / RBAC, vulnerability management, and incident response.
Owner-level administration of core business SaaS: Google Workspace and Jira required; experience with an ERP (NetSuite or similar), a CRM (Salesforce/SFDC or similar), and a BI tool (Looker or similar).
Ability to install, manage, and secure multiple operating systems: Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Comfortable with IP protocol networking, domain configuration, and routing; working knowledge of LAN/WAN/VPN.
Experience securing and governing cloud data storage.
People-leadership readiness: prior experience leading, mentoring, or formally managing IT staff, and the ambition to build and manage a team, while fully willing to operate as an individual contributor today.
Excellent oral and written communication skills, with the ability to translate technical and risk topics for executives and to enforce policy through influence at all levels; a strong customer-service orientation.
Well-organized and detail-oriented; able to follow instructions and stay composed in high-pressure situations.
Willingness to be available as needed after hours to proactively resolve critical IT issues and communicate clearly during incidents.
Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
7+ years of progressive IT experience, with leadership or formal mentorship exposure and readiness to manage a team.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience supporting a company through IPO readiness, or operating within a public company and its SOX control environment.
Security/GRC certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CISA, or CompTIA Security+.
Experience implementing or maintaining SOC 2 Type II and/or ISO 27001.
Experience with GRC or compliance-automation tooling (e.g., Vanta, Drata, Hyperproof, AuditBoard).
Familiarity with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and Zero Trust principles.
Experience in a high-growth scale-up, and/or a hardware, robotics, IoT, or connected-fleet environment.
Data-privacy familiarity (e.g., CCPA, GDPR) and experience supporting a multi-site or international organization.
Light scripting/coding ability (SQL, Python, Java) and the ability to integrate an IDE with ERP, CRM, and BI tools.
Experience with a version control system such as git.
General understanding of digital video formats; working knowledge of Video over IP and VOIP technologies is useful.

Responsibilities

Serve as Bear Robotics’ senior IT authority, owning the IT roadmap, budget, and tooling strategy, aligning technology investment with business growth.
Operate as a player-coach, defining the IT operating model, hiring, mentoring, and leading a team within 12-24 months.
Set IT standards and represent the IT function to executive leadership.
Author, implement, and enforce the company’s IT policy suite, including acceptable use, access control, change management, data classification and retention, incident response, business continuity/disaster recovery, third-party/vendor risk, asset management, and security awareness.
Design and operate IT general controls (ITGCs) to support SOX 404 and external audit readiness, collaborating with Finance, Legal, and external auditors on control narratives, evidence, walkthroughs, and remediation.
Drive readiness towards recognized frameworks such as SOC 2 and/or ISO 27001 and applicable data-privacy obligations.
Own identity and access management end-to-end, including SSO and MFA, role-based access and least privilege, joiner/mover/leaver provisioning and deprovisioning, periodic user access reviews, and segregation-of-duties controls across financially relevant systems.
Own the information security program, including endpoint security and mobile device management (MDM), vulnerability and patch management, email and SaaS security, logging and monitoring, and security incident response.
Champion a least-privilege, defense-in-depth posture and conduct ongoing security awareness training.
Administer, integrate, and manage the lifecycle of the core business stack, including Google Workspace, Salesforce (CRM), NetSuite (ERP), Jira, and Looker (BI), plus identity, MDM, and other SaaS applications.
Manage licensing, configuration, and optimization of SaaS applications, ensuring cloud data storage is safe, secure, and well-governed.
Maintain and administer networks and related infrastructure (LAN/WAN/VPN), the endpoint fleet, and connectivity across the environment.
Monitor systems for performance, availability, and security, implementing necessary patches, upgrades, and configurations.
Own the support experience as the sole responder today, receiving, logging, prioritizing, and resolving requests in a ticketing system within established SLAs, escalating where appropriate.
Build the support model, runbooks, and knowledge base for future team scaling.
Manage day-to-day IT operations, including new-hire setup, onboarding/offboarding, and company technology assets.
Manage external vendors and service providers for hardware, software, and network support, ensuring adherence to service-level agreements.
Own the full lifecycle of company technology assets, from procurement and deployment through recovery.
Create and maintain technical documentation, SOPs, knowledge-base articles, and control documentation.
Train and guide end-users, and enhance IT and security literacy across the organization.