IT Operations Specialist

Job Description

Job Description

We’re currently hiring an IT Operations Specialist as WRA builds its new internal IT & Cybersecurity functions. We are actively transitioning from an MSP model to a fully in-house model, and this role will operate under the guidance of our Director of Information Technology & Cybersecurity. 

In this role, you will act as the front-line support person serving our roughly 100 full-time employees primarily distributed throughout the Bay Area.  

This role is critical in ensuring our staff can perform their daily duties. You will be highly autonomous when providing general IT services, and work alongside a Senior Systems Engineer as your escalation point for complex issues and occasionally work with your Director to improve our technology stack and capabilities. 

To be considered for this role, candidates must reside within approximately 45 minutes of our Northern California offices in San Rafael or Emeryville. This role is Hybrid with an expectation to be in-office 1 to 2 days a week on average with travel to our San Diego office 1 to 2 times per year. 

Service Desk 

• Own the intake, triage, management and resolution of employee support requests. 

• Maintain ticket hygiene throughout the lifecycle of all requests. 

• Troubleshoot Windows endpoints, mobile devices, file collaboration platforms, printing and Microsoft 365 (including SharePoint, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) 

• Provide general break/fix services for WRA-issued assets. 

• Provide on-site support in our offices as required, including (but not limited to) hardware swaps, replacing peripherals, supporting conference room equipment and providing AV support for quarterly on-site meetings. 

• Engage with our specialized teams who may report connectivity or performance issues. 

• Participate in on-call rotation for critical but rare IT outages and other emergent duties.  

Identity & Access Management  

• Own employee onboarding and offboarding end to end, including account creation, group memberships, device deployment, license management, etc, so that new employees are ready on day one and departing employees are properly decommissioned. 

• Administer basic IAM functions, including creating and managing Guest accounts, MFA recoveries, change of group memberships, etc. 

• Assist the Director with the administration of security awareness training programs, including follow-ups and remediation assignments. 

Asset Management 

• Maintain asset inventory including general inventory management, loaner pools, peripherals, and e-waste. 

• Continuously ensure WRA-issued devices are compliant with our hardware lifecycle and warranty policies; coordinating and planning hardware upgrades with minimal disruption to our employees.  

Documentation & Ongoing Improvement 

• Help identify areas of improvement in our processes which you are responsible for executing. 

• Participate in performing root-cause analyses (RCA) of system issues. 

• Author knowledge base articles designed to enable employee self-service. 

• Assist in documenting services that you provide. Documentation must be considered a deliverable – not a “nice to have.” 

Experience & Location 

• 3 to 5 years of direct experience supporting a hybrid or remote workforce of at least 50 employees, with at least 2 years performing Tier 2 duties. 

• Be able to demonstrate a history of performing duties in a high-trust role. 

• Be local to the Bay Area and be able to be on-site at our San Rafael, Emeryville and Petaluma offices. 

Technical Skillset 

• Understand endpoint administration with Microsoft Intune or a comparable MDM platform, supporting Windows devices and mobile devices. 

• Be competent in core networking principles, including DNS, DHCP, VPN connectivity, and Wi-Fi connectivity, with the ability to isolate connectivity issues utilizing these concepts. 

• General understanding of cloud-hosted virtual desktops and ability to pinpoint performance and connectivity issues. 

• Must understand when it’s appropriate to escalate an issue and when to ask for help. 

How You Work 

• Ability to operate independently where appropriate as part of a lean team. 

• A zero-trust security mindset and demonstrate that through the methods you provide IT service. 

• Strong customer service skills and the ability to translate complex technical issues into plain language that anyone can understand. 

Physical Requirements 

• Able to perform physical duties, that may include lifting up to 50 lbs, climbing ladders indoors, crawling under furniture and reaching behind wall-mounted equipment.  

Bonus Points for

• Familiarity with industry standard frameworks, such as CMMC L1/L2, NIST SP 800-171, CCPA, SOC 2, ITSM, or ITIL. 

• Holding industry-standard certifications, including ITIL Foundation, CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+ or any relevant Microsoft certifications. 

• Experience administering Unifi Network and Protect. 

• Supporting CAD and GIS applications, such as AutoCAD, Civil3D, ArcGIS or spatial datasets. 

• Supporting markup tools, including Bluebeam and Adobe Acrobat. 

• Experience supporting Egnyte, Deltek VantagePoint or Elevia. 

WRA has an established internal leveling system for our staff that maps to salary bands that have been informed by market data. Our leveling system is dependent on years of relevant industry experience, education, and the level of responsibility and autonomy at which you’re expected to operate. 

We have posted a salary range that corresponds to the appropriate level for this position. In your first conversation with our recruiter, we will discuss leveling and compensation with you to make sure that our expectations are aligned.  

*The salary range for this position is $70,000-$80,000. 

Who are we? 

WRA’s an employee-owned environmental consultancy. We are a tenacious team of planners, engineers, and scientists, and we aim to leave the lands we love better than we found them.  

Our clients and partners hire us because we’re skilled at navigating through challenging projects involving wildlands, parks, community spaces, and infrastructure. We bring over four decades of expertise, long-standing relationships, and connections to our local communities to make sure that projects are pursued in responsible ways where both people and the environment thrive.  

As an organization, we believe that independence and interdependence are not mutually exclusive. We invest in systems, processes, and employee programs to support our staff’s collective engagement and success. At the same time, we encourage our employees to operate with an ownership mindset, taking responsibility for outcomes and being true to our commitments.  

WRA’s company vision is to cultivate a sustainable future where people and the environment thrive, and that effort starts first with our staff. We are committed to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment, and we have developed flexible policies, internal practices, and are investing in programs that prioritize learning and sustainability. We aim to create conditions that allow employees to prioritize their families, lead healthy and balanced lives, and to bring their authentic selves to work every day. We believe that by creating an exceptional workplace, our employees will be able to do their best work and be able to meaningfully contribute to the sustainability of the environment and the communities in which we live. 

WRA is an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to creating a diverse environment. We recruit, employ, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law. 

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.