Operations Manager Jobs in Groton, CT (NOW HIRING)

Why AIS?

When you join AIS, you're joining a mission-driven team that's passionate about making a difference. You'll work on projects that matter, alongside industry-leading experts, in an environment that fosters innovation, driving client success, and empowering our team to make a lasting impact. As an employee-owned company, we value collaboration, inclusivity, continuous growth, and shared success.

• Employee Ownership: Your contributions directly impact the company's success, and you share in its achievements.

• Continuous Learning: Access to resources, training, and mentorship to support your professional growth.

• Inclusive Culture: A workplace where diversity is celebrated, and everyone's voice is valued.

• Mission-Driven Work: Engage in projects that make a meaningful difference for our clients and communities.

What are we looking for?

At AIS, we're looking for more than just skills - we're looking for driven individuals who are passionate about making a difference, eager to grow, and aligned with our core principles.

Working@AISAt AIS, we are dedicated to providing our employees with diverse opportunities to grow their careers while supporting a variety of impactful projects. For this position, we are seeking a talented individual to join AIS as a Senior Cloud Operations Manager.

• Core Knowledge & Skills: Expert in multi-cloud and hybrid architectures, compliance, disaster recovery, and financial governance. Leads technology adoption and innovation.

• Work & Complexity: Develops long-term strategies for scalability, leads complex migrations and operations projects, and manages vendor relationships.

• Quality & Independence: Drives innovation, enforces standardized processes, leads continuous improvement, and sets best practices for operations and cost management.

• Teamwork & Communication: Provides strategic leadership, builds high-performing teams, collaborates with senior leadership, and represents the organization externally.

• Consulting & Engagement: Offers strategic consulting, develops technology roadmaps, recommends vendors, ensures compliance, and leads industry-based best practices.

As your initial project assignment, you will support the unique needs of our client as a Cloud Operations Manager / O&M Service Delivery Manager. Project Summary

TheCloud Operations Manager / O&M Service Delivery Managerleads Operations & Maintenance service delivery for a large Defense Industrial Base customer operatingMicrosoft AzureGovernmentand Microsoft 365GCC-Highcloud services.This role is expected to evolve O&M from its current state into a scalable, repeatable, and high-performing operating model, whilemaintainingstabilityand service continuity.The ideal candidate combines strong managed services leadership with enough technical fluency to understand Azure and M365 operations, challenge technical teams appropriately, interpret service health data, and communicate operational risk and business impact to customer leadership.The Manager must understand service desk operations, ITSM processes, cloud operations, compliance-driven environments, and how to lead technical teams toward measurable service outcomesand a strong positive customer experience.

Key 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, Azurenetworking,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.

Required For This Opportunity

• 8+ years in IT service delivery, cloud operations, or managed services

• 3+ years leading managed services or support teams throughgrowth, change, or operational maturation

• ITIL 4 Foundation or equivalent IT service management certification

• Experience incustomer-facing managed services withownership ofservice performance,service outcomes,customer experience, andoperating model effectiveness

• Experience improving operations through automation, self-service,monitoringimprovements, ticket deflection, or process redesign.

• Experience drivingSLA/KPI performance, backlog health, escalations, and/orservice reviews, using data toimprove the system, not just report on it

• Experience leading service desk / support operations (tiered support, incidents, requests, escalation, knowledge management)

• Ability todesign andimplementscalable operating modelsacross service functions

• Working knowledge of Azure and M365; able toengage technical teams and translate operational risk

• Experience with ServiceNow or similar todrive process discipline and service improvement

• Strong executive communication; able toalign stakeholders and build trust

Nice to Have Skills

• Experience supporting GCC High, Azure Government, or other restricted cloud environments.

• Experience supporting DIB, DoD, federal, aerospace, shipbuilding, manufacturing, or criticalinfrastructurecustomers.

• 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,orHDI 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.

Managing@AIS

As an AIS People Manager, your responsibilities will include:

• Coaching: Helping employees navigate challenges, strengthen relationships, and grow the skills that support success at AIS.

• Career Development: Supporting employees in exploring growth opportunities at AIS and aligning development plans to reach their goals.

• Performance Management: Creating clarity through clear expectations, regular feedback, and proactive support when performance concerns arise.

• Accountability and Results: Holding employees accountable for meeting expectations, delivering results, and adhering to company policies and values.

• Promotions and Compensation: Partnering with HR to evaluate and recommend promotions, salary adjustments, and rewards that reflect performance and potential.

• Timecard Approval: Ensuring accurate and timely approval of timecards.

At AIS, we are committed to offering competitive and fair compensation that reflects the skills, experience, and contributions of each team member. The targeted base salary range for this role is $125,000-$189,000 per year. Please note that this range is provided as a guideline and the final offer will be based on several factors, including but not limited to, skillset and competencies, level of experience, education, certifications, and location. We value transparency in our hiring process and are happy to discuss how your unique qualifications align with our compensation structure during the interview process.

Applied Information Sciences does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other basis. Employment decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs.