Technology Operations Specialist (L3)

Mercor•San Francisco, CA

4d•$160,000 - $190,000•Onsite

About The Position

Mercor is seeking its first IT Operations Lead to be responsible for the reliability, security, and scalability of its identity, endpoint, and IT infrastructure systems. This role will partner directly with the Head of IT to transition from reactive support to strategic, automated systems that proactively prevent issues. The goal is to balance speed, security, and an excellent user experience for the technical teams developing AI. The position is based in either the San Francisco or New York office, with close collaboration with Security, Engineering, and People Operations teams. The role involves handling daily operations and incident response, triaging and resolving Tier 2/3 tickets with a focus on automation, and managing Apple devices at scale. Key responsibilities include tracing root causes of failures across multiple systems, analyzing impacts of changes, building runbooks and guides, leading projects for operational improvements, translating technical issues for non-technical stakeholders, mentoring future IT team members, and participating in an on-call rotation. The ideal candidate is a systems thinker with strong incident management skills, an understanding of compliance controls, clear communication abilities, and a self-directed approach with a bias for action.

Requirements

5–7 years in IT Operations or Technical Support roles, ideally supporting technical teams (SaaS, cloud, AI/ML environments)
Systems thinker who naturally traces dependencies, considers second-order effects, and asks "why did this break?" not just "how do I fix it?"
Strong incident management skills: triage, root-cause analysis, blameless postmortems, pattern recognition
Understanding of compliance controls (access management, logging, change management)
Clear communicator who can explain technical issues to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders and write excellent documentation
Self-directed with a bias to action and strong judgment on when to escalate versus resolve independently
Solves problems others gave up on through creative, systematic troubleshooting
Thinks through second- and third-order effects before making changes
Documents solutions that help everyone, not just yourself
Builds trust through technical competence and calm, clear communication under pressure

Nice To Haves

Expert troubleshooting across the Apple ecosystem, including MDM (Kandji, Jamf, Intune)
Advanced Google Workspace and Okta administration (SAML/OIDC, lifecycle automation, SCIM provisioning)
Multi-cloud Support (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Network troubleshooting (DNS, VPNs, VLANs)
Scripting and automation (Python, Bash) and APIs for repetitive tasks and integrations, plus low-code automation tools (Okta Workflows, Zapier)

Responsibilities

Handle day-to-day operations and incident response
Triage and resolve Tier 2/3 tickets with a focus on automation and improving response and resolution times
Manage and troubleshoot Apple devices at hyper-scale
Trace root causes across complex, multi-system failures (Rippling → Okta → Kandji → Google Workspace), identify patterns in recurring tickets, and propose automation or self-service solutions
Analyze downstream impacts before making changes; map dependencies and blast radius for SSO, MDM, and access-control changes
Build and maintain runbooks, troubleshooting guides, and knowledge base articles that elevate team capabilities
Lead small projects that address operational pain points (BYOD policies, international provisioning, compliance evidence collection)
Translate technical issues for non-technical stakeholders (People Ops, Finance, Legal) during incidents and changes
Mentor future IT team members on troubleshooting methodology and systems thinking
Participate in an on-call rotation and help establish sustainable escalation procedures as the team grows