Information Technology Lead

PKF O’Connor Davies, LLP, is a top ranked full-service certified public accounting and advisory firm with a long history of serving clients both domestically and internationally.  The firm has 20 offices and employs more than 1,500 professionals globally who provide a complete range of accounting, auditing, tax and management advisory services.  The IT Lead’s role will help drive our IT department to function more efficiently and effectively with the goal of maximizing end user satisfaction. This includes overseeing the support of IT related operations in the firm’s Bethesda, Maryland office. Flexible working options available.

Essential Duties:

• IT point of contact and escalation point for IT needs associated with the Bethesda office.
• Asset Management of Bethesda office equipment (procure, configure, provisioning, tracking, disposal).
• Maintain essential IT operations, including operating systems, security tools, applications, servers, email systems, laptops, desktops, software, and hardware and associated documentation.
• Handle business-critical IT tasks and systems administration.
• Escalation point for IT service desk issue resolution, provide first contact support of incoming requests when required based on the volume of overall service desk requests.
• Monitor progress of open service desk tickets, prioritizing tickets generated by members of the Bethesda office to ensure they are assigned and addressed within SLA.
• Ability to work directly with vendor support to resolve issues when required.
• Communicate announcements as required for maintenance windows, unplanned outages and application deployments.
• Contribute to technician knowledgebase as needed.
• Build rapport with, and elicit IT related business needs from, business staff and service desk customers and recommend relative prioritization of requests based on business impact/need.
• Assist in planning and executing office-specific and firm wide maintenance activities (Windows server security and operating system updates, application, and infrastructure upgrades, etc).
• Research and evaluate emerging technologies, hardware, and software.
• Own and lead projects, solutions, and key responsibilities within a larger business initiative.
• Provide suggestions/recommendations for continuous improvement, lead the implementation of approved recommendations.
• Escalate incidents with accurate documentation to suitable senior manager/director, when required.
• Oversee development and dissemination of help sheets, user guides, and FAQ lists for end users.
• Ability to work overtime (weekday and/or weekend) and scheduled on-call support rotations during peak seasons.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college/university is required. Degree with IT related discipline strongly preferred.
• Minimum of 7 years IT experience, including experience working in an onshore/offshore model.
• Demonstrated leadership skills.
• Strong written, oral communication skills and documentation skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills, with a focus on rapport building and active listening skills.
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Service management – experience managing end user expectations and end user satisfaction.
• Ability to work as part of a global team and independently with remote supervision and support.
• Experience managing/implementing enterprise backup and recovery procedures, and system performance monitoring.
• Experience that is preferred but not essential:
  • Experience in an IT role with an Accounting/Advisory firm a plus.
  • Industry certifications a plus.
  • Demonstrated expertise in the Active Directory management and security.
  • Demonstrated expertise in Microsoft Endpoint Manager tools (InTune, Config. Mgr, Autopilot) and expertise in configuring and managing conditional access rules.
  • Experience with security monitoring processes and tools (e.g. SentinelOne or Carbon Black EDR, Mimecast, PhishER, KnowBe4, Thycotic/Delinea or Varonis Privileged Access Management).
  • Hands-on Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment, or equivalent setup and administration.
  • Application support experience with Document Management Systems (e.g. iChannel, Wolters Kluwer CCH Axcess Document) and Tax and Audit software (Wolters Kluwer CCH ProSystem fx/Axcess Tax and ProSystem fx Engagement, BNA Suite, Yearli, QuickBooks).
  • Experience with MS Exchange/O365/MS Teams/Sharepoint administration.
  • Experience with user and device monitoring/management and diagnostic utilities (e.g. InTune MDM, MS Authenticator MFA, BitLocker).
  • Experience with PowerShell and/or automation tools (e.g. MS Flow).
  • Experience wit