Senior IT Manager (Head of IT)

About PayZen

PayZen is on a mission to bring financial health to healthcare. Our products improve both access and affordability for patients and cash flow & administrative complexity for medical providers. We are trusted by a rapidly growing number of health systems, hospitals, and physician groups and are backed by leading venture capital investors, including NEA, SignalFire, Viola Group, and 7Wire Ventures.

About the Role

We are seeking a strategic, results-oriented, and high-impact Sr. IT Manager, to serve as our Head of IT. In this role, you will serve as an enterprise owner, fully owning PayZen's global IT infrastructure and operational roadmap.

You possess a deep domain understanding that allows you to proactively identify hidden operational risks and technical debt-finding problems others miss. You will contribute directly to our overarching function strategy to drive organizational productivity, security, and support, while learning to sequence technology bets to compound long-term impact. This role requires an individual focused on making others better, establishing scalable technical frameworks, and designing solutions that strengthen function-wide outcomes.

In this role, you will report directly to the VP, People, collaborating closely with People, Engineering, Finance, Legal, and leadership teams across PayZen's global organization to scale IT Operations. This is a hybrid role based at our San Francisco headquarters (in-office Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays).

Responsibilities

• Infrastructure Ownership & Architecture: Drive the long-term vision, design, and architecture of company-wide IT infrastructure, networks, and operations. Architect resilient environments that eliminate single points of failure and ensure high availability across a rapidly scaling organization.
• IT Automation Initiatives: Drive IT automation initiatives across onboarding, offboarding, ticketing, and other operational workflows to accelerate efficiency and create the infrastructure foundation needed to scale.
• AI Innovation & Adoption: Leverage AI tools and technologies creatively to build operational efficiencies, automate repetitive workflows, and scale team capacity. Model strong AI skills and actively encourage new and creative uses of AI across the company.
• Strategic Strategy & Sequencing: Contribute directly to the IT and corporate enablement strategy. Anticipate organizational friction points, evaluate technical trade-offs, and sequence infrastructure bets to compound long-term operational productivity and system maturity.
• Cross-Functional Project Management: Lead complex, high-stakes IT initiatives from conception to execution-including enterprise software integrations, identity governance overhauls, and office expansions-ensuring outcomes strengthen function-wide security and performance.
• Proactive Risk & Problem Resolution: Leverage deep domain expertise to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, architecture bottlenecks, and compliance gaps that others miss. Design and implement systematic, permanent fixes rather than surface-level workarounds.
• Vendor & Lifecycle Ecosystems: Oversee relationships, budgets, and service level agreements (SLAs) with critical third-party IT vendors and partners. Build automated, programmatic lifecycle frameworks for global asset management, account provisioning, and identity access management.
• Security & Compliance Leadership: Partner with Security and Legal teams to enforce robust enterprise IT security compliance. Act as the primary driver for continuous SOC 2 audits, HIPAA requirements, global data privacy compliance, and IT risk mitigation policies.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience directly managing Information Technology functions, corporate systems architecture, or infrastructure engineering in fast-paced tech environments.
• Demonstrated ownership capacity , with a proven track record of shifting from execution-only tasks to defining strategic roadmaps, balancing technical debt, and driving cross-functional alignment.
• Deep domain expertise across enterprise macOS/Windows management, scalable identity access management (e.g. Okta, Kandji, Google Workspace, etc.), and modern, API-driven SaaS tech stacks.
• Advanced technical foresight with an established ability to dissect complex infrastructure topologies, discover underlying technical risks, and execute solutions that bulletproof organizational operations.
• Hands-on compliance and information security experience , specifically project managing technical evidence collection and control enforcement for SOC 2 and HIPAA frameworks.
• Strong communication and collaborative capability , centered on lifting the technical baseline of the entire company, managing complex vendor ecosystems, and interfacing comfortably with executive leadership.
• Local to the Bay Area and able to commute to our San Francisco headquarters for the required hybrid schedule.

Why PayZen?

• An opportunity to positively affect the lives of thousands of patients.
• A chance to join a high-growth company at an early stage.
• Contribute to the development of a product that revolutionizes medical payments in ways never seen before.
• Become a key member of a collaborative, high-performing team, shaping its growth and success.
• Competitive pay, benefits, and stock options.