Computer Science Research Assistant Jobs in Rock Island, IL

BITCO Corporation, headquartered in Davenport, Iowa, is seeking an Assistant Vice President, IT Operations to join our team. With 11 branch offices in 10 states, BITCO provides quality insurance services to special industries including Construction, Forest Products, and Oil & Gas.

Position Summary:

The AVP of IT Operations, reporting to the Chief Information Officer, will be responsible for overseeing and maintaining the entire IT infrastructure of the company at a global level. This includes all public/private cloud environments, networks, virtual servers, IP based telephony, and all end-user devices. The role demands strategic people, technology, financial, and metric based leadership to ensure operational excellence, dedicated service mindset, and scalability while identifying and specializing in our core competencies as an IT Organization.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Plans, designs, and directs all operational activities of the IT Operations department, as well as provide direction and support for IT solutions that enhance mission-critical business operations
• Oversee the company's IT infrastructure, ensuring reliability, performance, and security with the following focus areas:
  • Network & Server Administration: Manage on-premise and cloud-based servers, network configurations, and security protocols
  • Cloud Operations: Lead cloud migration strategies, optimize cloud performance, and ensure cost-efficient cloud utilization
  • Device Management: Oversee deployment, maintenance, and security policies for user devices across different regions
  • Security & Compliance: Coordinate with Cybersecurity Manager to ensure compliance with industry regulations and security best practices in all IT operations
  • Vendor & Stakeholder Coordination: Manage relationships with external service providers, ensuring service quality and cost-effectiveness; oversee negotiation and administration of vendor, outsourcer, and consultant contracts and service agreements in support of IT operations
  • Incident Management & Support: Supervise troubleshooting and incident resolution, minimizing downtime and disruptions
• Work with internal and external stakeholders to validate and deliver the architecture ahead of new initiatives, to comply with our internal controls, security posture, and service metrics
• Works closely with decision makers in other departments to identify, recommend, develop, implement, and support cost-effective technology solutions for all aspects of the organization
• Build, mentor and scale a potentially geographically dispersed team of IT operations and service-management professionals-cultivating a culture of teamwork, transparency, and customer focus
• Design, implement, and mature practical and appropriate ITIL-aligned service management processes (incident, problem, change, release, configuration and service-request management) to achieve consistent and predictable end-user experiences with a metric based continuous improvement mindset
• Partner with cross-functional Teammates (Architecture, Development, Data Services, Cybersecurity, Audit, and Business Leaders) to prioritize initiatives, align on standards, and drive best practices to support business
• Develop and own a multi-year roadmap of operational goals and objectives to include modernization, financial discipline, partner/vendor management, managed services SLA, and executive/organizational communication and presentations
• Define and deliver a multi-year modernization roadmap-migrating legacy systems into cloud-native architectures, driving infrastructure as code, automation and DevOps practices to boost agility and reduce costs.
• Track, report and continuously improve service metrics (SLAs, MTTR, first-call resolution, availability) using dashboards and regular business reviews.
• Oversee operations support for network, compute, storage, voice, messaging, and cloud services-ensuring 24x7 stability and scalability across all regions
• Lead vendor and service-provider partnerships: negotiate SLAs/OLAs, manage performance reviews, and drive continuous improvement programs to align external execution with internal goals
• Develop and review budgets and ensure they comply with stated goals, guidelines, and objectives.
• Participate in varying levels of long-term planning at the functional or organization level
• As a management representative, consistently acts in the best interest of BITCO and provides leadership and communication to actively promote BITCO's mission, values, and culture.
• Perform other duties as assigned

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related field (Master's preferred or equivalent experience)
• 10+ years of progressively responsible experience in IT operations, service management or infrastructure leadership-minimum 5 years at a global scope including parent/subsidiary organizational structure with the following experiences preferred:
• Strong background in IT infrastructure in growth companies with excellent service and metric management, problem-solving skills, and the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced team environment
• Comfort with challenging the status-quo of established environments, standards, structure, and services to support a decentralized workforce, enable mobility, and partner with functional areas
• Deep hands-on expertise with ITSM frameworks (ITIL v3/v4), service-management tools and reporting platforms
• Strong expertise in cloud platforms (AWS), network administration, and server management
• Proven track record leading large-scale modernization initiatives: cloud migrations (AWS, Azure or GCP), automation (Ansible, Terraform), and DevOps pipelines
• Proven experience leading an organization through a infrastructure, data, and application modernization journey as it relates to infrastructure, service management, and end-user standards
• Strong vendor management experience-defining contracts, SLAs and driving performance improvements
• Familiarity with key insurance processes such as underwriting, policy issuance, claims, and loss control as well as back-office functions like Finance, HR, and IT is highly valuable
• Excellent analytical, communication and stakeholder-management skills-ability to translate technical complexity into business value
• Demonstrated ability to apply IT operational expertise in solving business problems
• Ability to present ideas in business-friendly and user-friendly language
• Highly self-motivated, self-directed, and attentive to detail