Senior Manager, IT

Forward Financing is a financial technology company based in Boston, Massachusetts with team members throughout the United States, Dominican Republic, and Canada. The company is on a mission to unlock the capital that fuels small businesses across America. Recognized as a Best Place to Work by Built In Boston and certified as a Great Place To Work®, Forward is investing in its employees, technology, and customer experience – with long-term success in mind every step of the way.

Forward is looking for a Senior IT Manager to lead teams in a fast, agile environment supporting a company growing at a rapid pace. The ideal candidate will be hands-on, materially contributing to the technical implementation and support work of the team, while developing a vision for growth of the IT function. You should come to work every day excited to mentor and nurture the talent on your team.

As a Senior IT Manager, you will lead IT operations, overseeing system maintenance, upgrades, and new builds for Forward's business. You'll manage daily IT activities, including support services and system administration, while creating scalable operational processes. You'll also supervise and mentor direct reports, define team metrics, lead large-scale projects, and manage vendor relationships and office technology improvements. This position operates on a hybrid model, with a requirement of 1-2 days in office each week.

In this role you will:

• Be responsible for maintaining, upgrading, and building the IT systems and devices that power Forward’s business.

• Lead and manage day-to-day IT operations, including support services and system administrators

• Create, run, and manage operational processes to allow the IT team to scale

• Formulate, articulate, and socialize a strong vision for growth of the IT function

• Own IT information systems including Google Workspaces

• Assist team in managing MacOS, ChromeOS, and Windows endpoints

• Supervise and mentor direct reports

• Define operational metrics for your teams and hold individuals accountable to those goals

• Lead large-scale IT projects and hold direct reports responsible for project delivery

• Create and implement a unified customer communications strategy, including SMS, call center, email

• Manage onboarding and offboarding, including rolling out zero-touch laptop deployments

• Negotiate vendor contracts and renewals. Own key vendor relationships.

• Continuously improve the technology in our 3 offices, including networking, teleconferencing, card access, cameras

• Handle AV for large company events

• Create and maintain key partnerships with global stakeholders

• Expand support to a 12x5 model

• Consolidate management of business information systems from non-technical departments

• Ensure that cybersecurity requirements are implemented across systems and devices to protect company assets and meet compliance requirements

• Travel internationally twice a year

Why you should apply:

• Rapidly growing company and team. There are ample opportunities for professional growth

• Leverage contemporary technologies. Forward uses best in class cloud services for IT operations

• Opportunity to lead high-impact technical projects

• An amazing team of peers and direct reports

Role Requirements:

(Even if you don’t check every box, but see yourself contributing, please apply.)

• Bachelor's degree

• At least 5 years of experience working in IT

• At least 2 years of experience managing a technical team

• Successful completion of at least one major IT project

• Strong experience in system administration

• Basic scripting and automation ability

• Experience managing IT budgets and hardware lifecycles

• Strong understanding of modern IT service management practices

• 3 years of experience managing MacOS, Windows, (ChromeOS a plus)

• Advanced knowledge in the following systems:

  • Google Workspaces

  • A hosted telephony provider or PBX system

  • An MDM provider for managing Mac, Windows endpoints

Compensation:

Annual Targeted Salary: $145,000 - $175,000 USD

Annual Target Bonus: 15%

At Forward Financing, we're committed to fair and transparent compensation. We believe in providing a compensation package that recognizes your skills, experience, and the unique value you bring to our team. We take a market-based approach to pay, regularly reviewing