Service Desk Manager – Tier II

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• Lead, mentor, and cultivate a geographically dispersed Tier Two Specialist team.

• Define, monitor, and publish operational metrics that encompass workload, utilization, backlog, SLA performance, ticket flow, and escalation quality.

• Utilize data to pinpoint workload discrepancies, capacity issues, performance gaps, and opportunities for enhancement.

• Manage the assignment of tickets and participation in queues to ensure equitable distribution of work and prompt attention to customer priorities.

• Ensure that special projects are clearly scoped, with defined deliverables and accountability, while maintaining support coverage.

• Guide Specialists to investigate unfamiliar issues instead of prematurely escalating them.

• Establish and reinforce standards for escalation among Analysts, Specialists, and Engineers.

• Supervise complex incidents and problem-management activities, including recurring issue analysis and root-cause follow-up.

• Collaborate with Engineering, Front Line leadership, Customer Success, and other operational teams to enhance service quality and facilitate cross-team transitions.

• Foster a supportive team culture characterized by clear expectations, recognition, accountability, collaboration, and technical learning.

• After approximately 3:00 PM Pacific Time Monday through Friday, manage triage and ticket assignments when Front Line management coverage concludes.

• Review queue states and incoming support demands.

• Assign and rebalance tasks among available resources.

• Coordinate escalations across Analysts, Specialists, and Engineers.

• Provide leadership during high-impact or customer-facing incidents.

• Ensure effective communication and handoffs to daytime leadership.

⛳️ Requirements

• 3+ years of leadership experience in IT support, service desk operations, technical services, or service management.

• Proven experience in leading remote or distributed technical teams; MSP experience is highly desirable.

• Demonstrated capability to define and utilize operational metrics, scorecards, KPIs, or service-management reporting.

• Strong grasp of queue management, workload balancing, utilization, SLAs, ticket aging, and escalation management.

• Solid technical troubleshooting background with sufficient depth to assess investigation quality and coach Tier Two staff.

• Familiarity with ITSM platforms and incident/problem-management processes.

• Excellent communication, coaching, and performance-management abilities.

• Sound judgment in balancing customer impact, technical complexity, staffing, and escalation decisions.

• Proficient in leading teams that support Windows Server, Active Directory, Group Policy, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, VMware Horizon, Citrix, VMware, Hyper-V, RMM, endpoint management, security, backup, MFA, Cisco, Sophos, and SonicWall.

• ITIL certification or equivalent practical experience is preferred.

• Experience in developing service desk scorecards or KPI frameworks is preferred.

• Experience with workforce utilization/capacity reporting is preferred.

• Experience in developing support staff towards advanced technical or engineering roles is preferred.

• Familiarity with compliance environments such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, CMMC, or similar is preferred.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based incentives.

• Comprehensive health care benefits including medical, dental, and vision coverage.

• Opportunities for professional development and career advancement.

• Flexible work schedules and remote work options.

• Supportive team environment with a strong emphasis on collaboration and continuous learning.