Position Summary
The Director of Information Technology will develop and implement all activities of the IT department at Vaxart, as well as provide direction and support for IT solutions. The Information Technology Director will work closely with the management team and internal/external stakeholders to identify key technology projects needed to sustain existing applications, support new strategies, and provide alternative cost-effective technology solutions that fit within the business needs of the organization. This hands-on role actively engages with employees, clients, contractors, and others technical personnel to resolve support requests, participate on projects, proactively support the desktop computing environment, create, and maintain documentation, and provide training to technical and non-technical personnel. This role requires the incumbent to work onsite in our office located in South San Francisco.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Assist in the development of short-, medium- and long-term plans to achieve strategic objectives for the company, and the IT department.
- Direct research and potential technology solutions and implementations in support of new initiatives, opportunities, and procurement efforts.
- Selecting and implementing suitable technology to streamline all internal operations and help optimize their strategic benefits.
- Review performance of IT systems to determine operating costs, productivity levels, and upgrade requirements.
- Benchmark, analyze, report on, and make recommendations for the improvement of the IT infrastructure and IT systems.
- Authorize and oversee the deployment, monitoring, maintenance, development, and support of all hardware and software based on organizational needs.
- Analyze complex business needs presented by the user community and/or clients and recommend technical solutions.
- Designing and customizing technological systems and platforms to improve the user experience.
- Serve as database administrator when required to lead and execute on data migration projects.
- Serve as integrations management lead across enterprise systems on data mapping, triggers, and automation.
- Serve as main cybersecurity resource and maintain ongoing security initiatives around SIEM, authentication, and incident management.
- Where necessary, re-engineer applications support to ensure it aligns with multi-functional and/or multi-location business process, tactical planning, and strategic vision.
- Maintain oversight of all IT projects, ensuring that commitments are properly planned, staffed, monitored, and reported.
- Define and communicate project milestones, service level agreements, and resource allocation to executive team, department leads, support staff and end users.
- Manage IT staffing, including recruitment, supervision, scheduling, development, evaluation, and disciplinary actions.
- Commit to comprehensive and consistent documentation of business systems and interdependencies.
- Develop and review budgets for IT department and ensure they are responsible to stated goals, guidelines, and objectives.
- Responsible for IT SOX controls.
- Develop business case justifications and cost/benefit analysis for IT spending and initiatives.
- Preserve assets by implementing disaster recovery and backup procedures and information security and control structures.
- Oversee negotiation and administration of IT vendors, outsourced, and service agreements.
- Manage, participate, and attend industry related user groups, affinity organizations as a representative of the company in the technology community.
- Monitor the industry for developments in IT operations; evaluate and implement relevant new tools and service management frameworks.
- Hire, develop, evaluate, and retain a highly qualified team of IT professionals.
- Develop and maintain a plan that provides for succession and continuity in the most critical IT management positions as needed.
Job requirements – Skills, Experience and Education
- Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, or relevant business or technical discipline.
- 15+ years of experience in IT management positions.
- An advanced degree in a related field, such as computer science, engineering and/or business (MBA) is preferred.
- Proven experience in IT infrastructure strategic planning and development, project management, and policy development.
- Demonstrated experience and success with migrating business systems and infrastructure to the cloud.
- Solid understanding of data analysis, budgeting, and business operations.
- Experience working in regulated environments, specifically SOX and GMP (21CFR Part 11).
- Strong understanding and technical knowledge of current network and PC operating systems, hardware, protocols, and standards.
- Experience with systems design and development from business requirements analysis through to day-to-day management.
- Knowledge of a range of vendor technology solutions; able to select and integrate the most appropriate technologies to support the business.