IT Operations & Incident Response Manager (Senior)

North Chicago, ILComputer World Services – Information Technology /Full-time /On-siteComputer World Services, Corp. (CWS) seeks a Senior IT Operations & Incident Response Manager to coordinate daily operational monitoring, incident triage, outage recovery, and service-restoration activities for the USMEPCOM ENLIST program. Working under the Systems / Network Administrator Lead / Outage Response Team (ORT) Lead, this position mobilizes technical teams, coordinates approved recovery procedures, maintains detailed incident timelines, and ensures accurate status communications throughout active outages.The IT Operations & Incident Response Manager integrates response activities with the Service Desk and applicable ITSM processes and supports incident reporting, root-cause analysis, and corrective-action tracking. The successful candidate brings strong operational judgment and the ability to organize multiple technical teams during time-sensitive service disruptions.Key Tasks & ResponsibilitiesCoordinate daily monitoring of USMEPCOM networks, applications, systems, cloud services, and supporting infrastructure.Receive, log, validate, classify, prioritize, and triage outage notifications and alerts from monitoring tools, the Service Desk, technical teams, and end users.Under the direction of the ORT Lead, mobilize infrastructure, network, systems, application, database, cloud, storage, vendor, and Government support teams.Establish and maintain incident bridges, communications channels, ticket records, action trackers, and restoration timelines; track assignments, dependencies, decisions, and target times.Maintain a complete incident timeline from detection and notification through escalation, diagnosis, mitigation, recovery, validation, and closure.Provide status updates at intervals not exceeding one hour during active Severity (SEV) 1 and SEV 2 outages; coordinate consistent Service Desk messaging and respond promptly to Government requests for status and recovery estimates.Coordinate execution of approved diagnostic, mitigation, workaround, and recovery procedures by authorized personnel, and coordinate service validation to confirm restoration.Escalate unresolved issues, resource constraints, vendor delays, and restoration risks to the ORT Lead; coordinate vendor, carrier, utility, cloud-provider, and third-party engagement as directed.Collect incident evidence, support written incident reports and root-cause analysis sessions, and track corrective and preventive actions through completion.Integrate outage response with incident, problem, change, configuration, availability, continuity, and knowledge-management processes, and ensure incident records are suitable for metrics, audits, and Government review.Support quarterly Incident Response Plan reviews, outage-response exercises, tabletop reviews, and call-tree validations; maintain procedures, contact lists, escalation paths, and templates.Develop incident-volume, response-time, restoration-time, severity, and trend reports, and recommend improvements to monitoring, triage, escalation, and restoration workflows.Education & Experience Required:Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology or a related field, or equivalent relevant professional experience.Minimum of seven (7) years of relevant IT operations, computer operations, incident management, infrastructure support, systems administration, or network operations experience.Ability to work on-site in N. Chicago, IL, five days per week, and to support outage response outside normal business hours when required.Preferred:Experience coordinating major-incident or outage-response activities in a federal or DoD environment, including SEV 1–3 incidents managed under defined escalation and communications procedures.Experience supporting a 24/7/365 network operations center, service operations center, command center, or Outage Response Team.Experience providing recurring incident-status updates to Government, technical, and executive stakeholders.Knowledge of ITIL incident, major-incident, problem, change, configuration, availability, continuity, and knowledge-management practices.Experience using ServiceNow or a comparable ITSM platform, and familiarity with enterprise monitoring, event-management, and observability tools.General knowledge of network, server, application, cloud, database, storage, LAN, WAN, and SAN operations.Strong crisis-coordination, communication, documentation, and decision-making skills.Certifications Required: Current ITIL Foundation certification.Preferred: Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), CompTIA Network+, or another relevant systems, networking, infrastructure, or IT operations certification.Security Clearance Active Secret clearance or higher is required.Other (Travel, Work Environment, DoD 8570 Requirements, Administrative Notes, etc.)Work Environment / Travel:On-site in N. Chicago, IL, five days per week (no telework).Supports a 24/7/365 outage-response capability; availability outside normal business hours may be required.Administrative Notes:Period of Performance: March 1, 2027 – February 28, 2033Contract Start Date: March 1, 2027Note: By applying to this position, the candidate acknowledges and consents to having their resume included in an active competitive Government contract bid.$120,000 - $150,000 a yearThe offered rate will be based on the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, abilities and/or experience and in consideration of internal parity. The posted range is appropriate for a typical candidate meeting, at a minimum, all the core requirements of the position.Computer World Services is an affirmative action and equal employment opportunity employer. Current employees and/or qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.Computer World Services is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Computer World Services will ensure that individuals with disabilities (IWD) are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact Human Resources at [email protected].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.