Director of IT

Emergence Director of IT, Emergence | Remote, U.S.-based | Full-Time

About the role

Emergence is hiring its first dedicated IT hire. This is a foundational role: you will build the portfolio IT function from the ground up, serving as the primary owner of IT across our holding company and portfolio companies. You will work closely with a fractional senior IT/Security advisor who owns the architecture with you, and a managed service provider for day-to-day delivery.

You are not expected to run every company's IT — you are expected to know the portfolio well enough to centralize what creates leverage across companies, leave alone what a company already does well, and know the difference.

What you'll do

• Acquisition integration
• Run the IT workstream for every acquisition: inventory the stack, map access, stand up accounts and devices, wire the company into Emergence systems
• Build the Day 1-100 integration playbook this function currently lacks, then run it at roughly three closes a quarter
• Identity, access, and operations
• Build and operate the joiner/mover/leaver standard across the portfolio, including offboarding completeness
• Operate the identity platform after selection and rollout (selection is in-flight, informed by a portfolio audit underway)
• Own the living inventory of tools, accounts, admin credentials, licenses, and renewal dates that every consolidation and security decision depends on Vendors and shared services
• Manage the MSP relationship and SLA for portfolio companies that consume central IT delivery
• Own vendor contracts, renewals, license consolidation, and portfolio volume pricing
• Build the back-end connections that feed our cross-portfolio data platform
• Who you are
• 6-10 years in hands-on IT operations, systems administration, or MSP/consulting delivery, with at least 3 in an IT leadership role
• Experience running IT across multiple companies, clients, or business units at once — not a single-company environment, however well run
• Experience owning the IT workstream of an acquisition — due diligence, Day 1 readiness, and post-close systems rationalization and migration
• Deep understanding of tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized IT delivery; you are a vocal advocate for what works well and what doesn’t
• Fluent in identity and access operations (Okta, Entra, JumpCloud, or similar): SSO, provisioning, lifecycle workflows
• Comfortable walking into a company with no documentation and systematically mapping what exists
• Strong vendor and license management instincts: contracts, renewals, SLAs, consolidation
• You build the playbook rather than execute one handed to you
• Excellent business stakeholder management skills - you can professionally engage at all levels of the organization
• Bonus points
• Prior experience in a PE portfolio or holding company
• Admin depth in both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 (we run both today)
• Experience in regulated segments like healthcare, finance, or defence where compliance is integral to IT operations