Director Ticket Operations Jobs in Virginia (NOW HIRING)

Job Summary:
AIS (Applied Information Sciences) is a mission-driven company focused on making a difference through innovative projects. They are seeking a Senior Cloud Operations Manager to lead Operations & Maintenance service delivery for a large Defense Industrial Base customer, ensuring service continuity and operational excellence in Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 environments.
Responsibilities:
• Own overall O&M service performance across Azure, Microsoft 365, endpoint management, identity, collaboration, messaging, security, and related operational workstreams.
• Drive teams to meet defined SLAs, KPIs, service levels, and customer commitments.
• Establish and enforce a consistent operating model for incident, request, problem, change, release, knowledge, and service level management.
• Hold technical and support teams accountable for responsiveness, quality, documentation, escalation discipline, and customer communication.
• Lead and mature help desk/service desk operations, including intake, triage, queue management, ticket routing, escalation, and backlog hygiene.
• Define and manage tiered support models across Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, engineering escalation, and vendor escalation.
• Monitor and improve key service desk metrics such as first-contact resolution, mean time to acknowledge, mean time to resolve, reopen rate, aged backlog, SLA compliance, customer satisfaction, and ticket deflection.
• Drive consistent use of ServiceNow or comparable ITSM tooling for tickets, workflows, dashboards, reporting, approvals, and audit trails.
• Provide operational leadership across Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 services, including monitoring, identity, endpoint management, collaboration, messaging, security, compliance, and platform reliability.
• Understand the operational implications of Microsoft Entra ID, Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Intune, Defender, Purview, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Azure networking, backup/recovery, and landing zone operations.
• Serve as a primary service delivery interface for customer stakeholders and program leadership.
• Build trust with customer leaders, technical teams, service desk stakeholders, and executive sponsors.
• Translate technical and operational data into clear business-relevant communication, including risk, impact, trends, mitigation plans, and decisions needed.
• Ensure O&M execution aligns with customer security, compliance, audit, and operational control requirements.
• Support operations in regulated DIB, federal, GCC High, Azure Government, CUI, or ITAR-sensitive environments as applicable.
Qualifications:
Required:
• 8+ years in IT service delivery, cloud operations, or managed services
• 3+ years leading managed services or support teams through growth, change, or operational maturation
• ITIL 4 Foundation or equivalent IT service management certification
• Experience in customer-facing managed services with ownership of service performance, service outcomes, customer experience, and operating model effectiveness
• Experience improving operations through automation, self-service, monitoring improvements, ticket deflection, or process redesign.
• Experience driving SLA/KPI performance, backlog health, escalations, and/or service reviews, using data to improve the system, not just report on it
• Experience leading service desk / support operations (tiered support, incidents, requests, escalation, knowledge management)
• Ability to design and implement scalable operating models across service functions
• Working knowledge of Azure and M365; able to engage technical teams and translate operational risk
• Experience with ServiceNow or similar to drive process discipline and service improvement
• Strong executive communication; able to align stakeholders and build trust
Preferred:
• Experience supporting GCC High, Azure Government, or other restricted cloud environments.
• Experience supporting DIB, DoD, federal, aerospace, shipbuilding, manufacturing, or critical infrastructure customers.
• Experience leading major incident management, root cause analysis, post-incident reviews, and corrective action tracking.
• Experience building or improving runbook libraries, SOPs, knowledge articles, and operational readiness processes.
• Experience preparing monthly service reviews, executive dashboards, QBR inputs, SLA reports, and continuous improvement plans.
• HDI Support Center Manager, HDI Support Center Director, or HDI Desktop Support Manager, or comparable help desk/support center leadership certification.
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification.
• Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert certification.
• Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator Associate certification.
• Microsoft Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate certification.
• CompTIA Security+, CISSP, CISM, CCSP, or comparable security/compliance certification.
Company:
AIS helps large commercial and federal clients accelerate innovation with security and compliance in mind. Founded in 1982, the company is headquartered in Reston, USA, with a team of 501-1000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.