Director of Information Systems

About Braven:
We believe that the next generation of leaders will emerge from everywhere. We empower promising college students with the skills, confidence, experiences, and networks necessary to transition from college to strong first jobs, which lead to meaningful careers and lives of impact. Learn more about Braven’s impact:
https://impactreport.bebraven.org/
https://jobsreport.bebraven.org/

The Role:
Braven is looking for someone to lead its IT efforts,ensuring that the organization’s IT needs are met. In practice, this means being at the helm to manage Braven’s accounts across Google Workspace, Asana, Slack, Zoom, etc. You will partner closely with our People & Operations team in this regard, improving our systems and processes so that the organization operates as smoothly as possible. You will also be in charge of hardware across the organization, defining policies for when a new laptop is warranted, deploying asset and devicement management systems, and troubleshooting when staff experience issues.

In addition to these IT responsibilities, you will also champion cybersecurity in the organization. Working with the CTO, Head of Data, and General Counsel, you will design cybersecurity and privacy training and education for the organization so that staff manage usernames and passwords using best practices. You will help secure laptops by empowering staff to follow security policies, such as encrypting data at rest. Finally, you will define permissions models that keep information secure while maintaining the ease of use of our technology.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead and mentor a team of IT interns answering IT-related tickets from staff
• Ensure that accounts in Braven’s technical systems are provisioned promptly, deactivated quickly, and set up with appropriate permissions
• Take ownership of how staff manage their passwords, ensuring that we use strong unique passwords while also providing education and training to staff so that they feel empowered
• Manage internal laptops and devices, tracking who owns which device and the current status in terms of operating system updates and hard drive encryption
• Troubleshoot connectivity issues whether those occur in the office or in someone’s home (as it relates to work)
• Proactively grow your technical skill set, exploring new technologies and keeping up to date on policies and best practices that would benefit Braven
• Collaborate with other teams to help solve their IT challenges
• Adopt a customer service mindset, seeking to solve people’s problems with patience

Experience, Skills & Traits:

• Must be authorized to work for any company in the US
• Must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide proof of such by the date of hire. Individuals may claim exemption from the vaccine requirement for medical or religious reasons. Exempted individuals will be subject to weekly testing if they engage in any in-person work activities.
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a computer related field (computer science, information systems, computer engineering, cybersecurity, etc.)
• 10+ years of experience in customer support roles that require provisioning hardware, managing software updates, or deploying WiFi networks
• 2+ years implementing systems to reduce cybersecurity risk
• People management - You have managed individual contributors or have been responsible for delegation, coaching and development of individuals sitting in lateral or diagonal roles in your previous experience.
• Self-Starter – when you identify problems, you act on them; you don’t need direction to have impact
• Task Management – You don’t drop balls. You fully own the resolution of your tasks and projects and are able to prioritize amongst a large body of requests big and small.
• Strong Judgment: You exhibit strong judgement on when to act alone and when to seek input to make decisions. You demonstrate discretion in understanding how much to share and when.
• Communication – You lean towards over communicating, ensuring that your team is aware of the issues you are seeing, progress you are making, and overall priorities you are following. You also have very strong writing skills, able to convey technical guidance in everyday language to non technical folks with an empathetic tone.
• You lean in - When you see a system that needs improvement, a role that needs to be filled, you jump in and address it and work with the right stakeholders to find the right long-term fix and the right ‘home’ for the issue at hand.
• Scrappy – you’re willing to get your hands dirty and do whatever it takes to achieve your end goals, you recognize that no day will be like the day before and are flexible enough to jump on the highest priority project even if you didn’t see it coming

Total Rewards Philosophy:
Braven is committed to attracting and retaining extraordinary, diverse leaders who believe deeply in our mission and uphold our core values as organizational leaders and stewards within and outside of the organization. Braven provides a “total rewards package” that encompasses comprehensive and competitive benefits, compensation, recognition, and career development. Current benefits include: Braven covers 85% of health care costs, has unlimited vacation time, matches up to 5% of your 401K contribution starting your first full month, a paid sabbatical after 4 years on staff, and competitive base salaries based on the midpoint of the market among not-for-profit organizations of similar size. We believe in compensating staff members fairly in relation to each other, their qualifications, and their impact on behalf of the organization and take internal equity seriously. Staff who are meeting expectations generally receive an annual 3% increase. Braven conducts benchmarking every other year; based on this external data, some salaries may also receive market adjustments to keep pace with relevant competition in similar roles. Braven reserves the right to change benefits at any time.

The salary for this position depends on your prior work experience and the starting range for this position will likely be between $83,000-$103,700. Please be advised, you will have an opportunity to discuss salary in more detail after you begin the application process.

In typical times where social distancing is not in place, Braven teammates gather in the office four days a week. Each teammate can use one flex day of their choosing per week to work remotely. We believe in the magic, connection, and collaboration that happens when people work together face-to-face and we believe in giving people flexibility to focus, balance personal priorities, and save themselves one commute per week. Therefore, we require teammates to live within commuting distance of Chicago.

Braven is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected factor. We encourage talented individuals of all backgrounds to apply.