Service Desk Manager

Service Desk Manager Nautilus International Holding Corp seeks a Service Desk Manager to lead a modern IT Help Desk function supporting ~400 employees across 40+ port terminals, cruise operations, and corporate offices. This role oversees a team of 56 support analysts, manages a Fresh service-based ITSM platform, drives service quality metrics (FCR, MTTR, SLA compliance, CSAT), and partners with IT Governance to deliver repeatable, auditable service delivery. The Service Desk Manager owns the day-to-day Help Desk operations while building best practices, automating repeatable processes, and mentoring team members toward advanced support roles. The role also owns IT procurement for end-user computing, maintains the enterprise IT asset inventory, and tracks enterprise software and SaaS license renewals. Essential Duties and Responsibilities Service Desk Operations & Team Leadership Manage day-to-day Service Desk operations and lead a team of 56 support analysts (Tier 1 and Tier 2): Assign, prioritize, and manage ticket queue; ensure tickets are routed appropriately by category and priority; escalate complex issues to Infrastructure, Security, or Application teams per SLA. Conduct daily standup meetings; review queue volume, aging tickets, SLA breaches, and team capacity. Hire, onboard, train, and mentor Service Desk Analysts, whether employed directly by the Company or through outsourced service providers; provide ongoing coaching in system navigation, customer service, troubleshooting methodologies, and escalation protocols. Conduct annual performance reviews and identify skill gaps; design and deliver training plans (certifications: CompTIA, Microsoft, Freshservice administrator). Create and maintain on-call schedule; cover for absent team members during peak volume; model customer service excellence and technical problem-solving. ITSM Platform Administration & Governance Administer Freshservice: configure and maintain categories, workflows, SLAs, priority matrix, agent groups, knowledge base, Service Catalog items, and integrations with Entra ID, email, and Freshcaller. Design and implement Workflow Automations to reduce manual overhead: auto-routing, payroll-window escalations, waiting-on-customer reminders, auto-closure of stale tickets, request fulfillment (new-hire onboarding, offboarding, access requests). Build and maintain Service Catalog (initial 11 items, expanding to 90%+ vendor coverage): onboarding, offboarding, role changes, distribution lists, software installs, hardware requests, access requests, VPN, mobile enrollment, and AI tool access. Define and enforce categorization taxonomy (~13 categories, 50+ sub-categories); audit weekly for mis-categorizations (target Partner with IT Governance (Director) on governance policies: SLA targets, priority matrix, escalation criteria, recording policy, data classification, and approval workflows. Key Performance Indicators & Reporting Own KPI tracking, dashboards, and monthly/weekly reporting: Define and track 6 core metrics: FCR (First Contact Resolution), MTTR (Mean Time to Resolve), MTTA (Mean Time to Acknowledge), SLA Compliance, Reopen Rate, and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction). Maintain live dashboards (Freshservice analytics): public board for daily team standup, weekly management report, monthly all-staff summary. Conduct monthly KPI review with IT Governance: analyze trends, identify outliers, propose corrective actions (training, process change, tooling). Generate and distribute weekly/monthly reports: SLA breaches, ticket aging, category distribution, per-site performance, team utilization, and queue time. Benchmark against industry standards and propose SLA adjustments based on data. Knowledge Management & Continuous Improvement Build and maintain a knowledge base to improve first-contact resolution and team efficiency: Establish KB best practices and templates; enforce agent documentation at ticket close (mandatory KB link or new article creation). Author and review KB articles (target 80+ articles by Q4); prioritize high-volume issues. Identify recurring incidents (>3 per month) and initiate Problem Management: root-cause analysis, permanent fix or workaround, Change Advisory Board (CAB) review, and closure. Conduct quarterly retrospectives with team: review what worked, what didn't, and process improvements. Mentor junior team members toward specialization and identify candidates for advanced roles (escalation engineer, ITSM administrator, tier 2 specialist). IT Procurement & Asset Management Own IT procurement for end-user computing, the IT asset lifecycle, and enterprise software license renewal tracking: Purchase end-user devices and peripherals laptops, desktops, monitors, mobile devices, headsets, and consumables against an approved budget line and an approved requisition; obtain quotes, raise purchase orders through approved vendors, and confirm receipt. Maintain the enterprise IT asset inventory as the single source of truth: device identifier, assigned user, site or terminal, status, warranty end date, and lifecycle stage; reconcile the register against a physical count on a defined cycle. Manage the spare and loaner device pool across corporate and terminal locations so an operational user can be restored to service same-day. Recover, wipe, and redeploy or retire IT assets at employee separation or role change; coordinate with HR and Security so that asset recovery and access revocation occur together. Track enterprise software and SaaS license renewals: maintain the renewal calendar with renewal dates, contractual notice periods, auto-renewal terms, entitlement counts, and business owner; flag every renewal with a recommendation at least 90 days before the contractual notice deadline. Reconcile licenses purchased against licenses assigned on a quarterly basis; report true-up exposure and reclaim unused or orphaned licenses. Route all new software, SaaS, and AI tool requests through IT Governance and Security review before any purchase commitment is made. Manage secure disposal of retired equipment through an approved vendor; retain certificates of data destruction as audit evidence. Track IT procurement and license spend against budget; report monthly to IT Governance and support annual hardware refresh planning. Vendor Management & Cross-Team Collaboration Manage vendor escalations and coordinate with internal IT teams to meet end-to-end SLAs: Maintain vendor/application contact list and SLA commitments and escalate per defined thresholds. Define and document Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) with Infrastructure, Network, Security, and Application teams. Partner with IT Governance on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with business stakeholders; ensure Service Desk commitments are achievable. Attend Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings; represent Help Desk impact of IT changes and identify training implications. Communication & Stakeholder Management Communicate Service Desk status, challenges, and wins to business partners and IT leadership: Present monthly KPI summary to IT Governance; escalate issues (SLA breaches, staffing challenges, tech gaps) with proposed solutions. Respond to business unit leadership requests; provide data-driven insights and action plans. Communicate service outages and status updates to employees via email, portal alerts, or all-hands announcements. Other duties as assigned by supervisor. Qualifications Required: Education: High school diploma or GED; associate's degree in IT, computer science, or business preferred. Experience: Minimum 5 years IT support experience, including at least 2 years in a Service Desk leadership role. Minimum 2 years hands-on Help Desk support (Tier 1 and Tier 2): troubleshooting Windows/Mac/mobile, networking, authentication, common business applications. Experience administering an ITSM platform (Freshservice, ServiceNow, Jira Service Management): configuring workflows, categories, SLAs, dashboards, integrations. Demonstrated experience managing team performance: hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance reviews, capacity planning for 58 people. Knowledge: Working knowledge of Active Directory, Entra ID (Azure AD), and group policy (GPO). Networking basics: TCP/IP, DNS, VPN, Wi-Fi, firewall concepts. Technical Skills: Strong proficiency in Windows 10/11, macOS, and iOS/Android device management (Intune, MDM). Microsoft 365 (Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, Outlook) administration and troubleshooting. SQL or basic database query experience (helpful for ticketing system reporting). Proficiency with ITSM tools (Freshservice or equivalent): configuration, reporting, workflow automation, knowledge management. Comfortable with Google Workspace, SharePoint, GitHub/Jira, or other modern collaboration tools. Soft Skills: Excellent communication skills: explain