Friedman Williams
Help Desk Manager Washington DC
Job ID: 16901
The IT Help Desk Manager is responsible for leading the Firm’s technical support teams to provide a gold-standard technology experience for our lawyers, staff, practice groups, and clients. This role takes lead on the end-to-end design and delivery of IT Help Desk support services to maintain defined service levels and uphold customer expectations for quality. The combination of technical acumen with a relentless customer focus, communication skills, and a desire to help prevent / resolve issues enables the IT Help Desk Manager to promote a reliable and effective technology experience.
Duties and Responsibilities:
• Oversees the Firm’s global IT Help Desk (Level 1) staff to provide timely, accurate, and courteous technology support.
• Works with lawyers, staff, clients, and other departments to provide responsive and customer-oriented service that meets or exceeds expectations.
• Contributes to the design, development, and ongoing support of the IT Service Catalog, along with defined SLAs, owners, and fulfillment processes.
• Actively partners with the Director of Service Management and other cross-functional IT leads to define, implement, measure, and continuously enhance ITSM processes for the IT Help Desk (e.g., Incident, Problem).
• Actively partners with the Director of Service Management and other peer IT functional leadership (e.g., Regional IT Services) to establish a global tiered service model that optimizes IT service resources, drives efficiencies, and delivers a goldstandard experience.
• Measures support teams against defined performance SLAs and proactively leads continuous improvement efforts (in partnership with cross functional IT stakeholders as appropriate).
• Establishes recurring reporting of the IT Help Desk to monitor performance against pre-defined indicators.
• Schedules Help Desk staff shifts to ensure hours of operation are covered, including during emergency office closures such as weather-related events
• Informs the continuous development standards for the IT Help Desk, defining the baseline operating knowledge required for staff (e.g., best practices, technical skills, introduction of new systems, procedures and policies).Manages 3rd party support vendors to ensure that agreed service levels are being met.
• Analyzes Help Desk workflows for trends to identify potential problem areas / improve business processes, and works with supervisory leadership to implement continuous improvement.
• Works closely with cross functional IT leadership to provide feedback on services, help identify and understand system changes, and to prepare support staff for these changes.
• Actively works with supervisory leads to monitor and adjust inbound work assignments for handling support requests within established service level agreements.
• Actively works to deploy and promote ITIL best practices.
• Actively informs and co-develops the knowledge base (IT / Firm facing) for the Firm’s technology services.
• Collaborates and assists in the review and development of the desktop / laptop standard OS, applications and hardware images.
• Conducts quality review procedures to ensure quality services.
• Reviews IT Help Desk training materials created by Training staff and conducts IT Help Desk training at Help Desk meetings.
• Stays abreast of industry trends and best practices for service management.
Qualifications:
• College degree is strongly preferred, ideally in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline.
• Appropriate technical certification(s) are preferred (e.g., ITIL v4).
• 7+ years of relevant experience, ideally in a large Law Firm setting, a comparable professional services organization, or a legal information services provider.
• Demonstrated experience leading an IT Support team or function.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, and continuously refining a global, tiered IT support desk model.
• Demonstrated experience with ITIL oriented process design for IT Service Management.
• Demonstrated experience working in a time-sensitive, high-visibility environment.
• Experience with leading service desk performance indicators and service level standards.
• Experience with leading service desk technology solutions for IT and non-IT users (e.g., ServiceNow). Experience with current operating systems and ideally applications and technologies common to a Law firm (e.g., Collaboration solutions, Document Management Solutions).
• Strong service orientation, and an understanding of the importance of developing effective working relationships with users and organizational stakeholders of all levels.
• Demonstrated ability to manage a team of information technology specialists in the execution of both project and operational workloads.
• Demonstrated ability to serve as a change agent, leading and inspiring others to act, especially under circumstances when change is unpopular.
• Highly motivated, analytical, organized, and efficient.
• Excellent problem solving and debugging skills.
• Ability to work well under pressure.
• Ability to work as part of a team and lead others.
• Availability to work before and after business hours and weekends with little or no notice.