Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Assistant IT Manager

🎯 Role Definition

The Assistant IT Manager supports the IT Manager in planning, implementing, and maintaining enterprise IT systems and services. This role combines hands-on infrastructure and operations work with people leadership, vendor coordination, and project delivery. The Assistant IT Manager is accountable for ensuring high availability, security, and performance of networks, servers, endpoints, and cloud resources while driving continuous improvement, ITIL-based service delivery, and cross-functional alignment with business stakeholders.

Key SEO phrases: Assistant IT Manager responsibilities, IT operations management, infrastructure support, network and security administration, ITIL service delivery, technical leadership.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Systems Administrator with multi-site or hybrid cloud experience.
IT Team Lead / Technical Lead responsible for day-to-day operational support.
Network Administrator or Systems Engineer with project delivery experience.

Advancement To:

IT Manager / Head of IT
Infrastructure Manager or Director of IT Operations
IT Operations Lead for regional or multi-site environments

Lateral Moves:

Cloud Operations Manager
Security Operations (SecOps) Lead
IT Project Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Oversee day-to-day IT operations across servers, storage, virtual environments, and cloud platforms to ensure 99.9% availability and rapid incident resolution, escalating to senior management when SLA targets are at risk.
Lead, mentor, and develop a team of system administrators, network engineers, and desktop support technicians by assigning work, conducting performance reviews, and defining training plans to build operational resilience and career growth.
Manage and execute infrastructure projects (e.g., data center migration, virtualization rollouts, cloud migrations) from planning through cutover, including resource allocation, timeline management, risk mitigation, and stakeholder communication.
Implement and maintain network infrastructure including routing, switching, wireless, VPNs, and firewalls to ensure secure, scalable connectivity for multi-site and remote workforces.
Drive IT security and compliance initiatives by applying patch management, vulnerability remediation, endpoint protection, access control, and alignment to standards such as NIST or ISO 27001.
Administer identity and access management systems (Active Directory/Azure AD) and SSO solutions, ensuring least-privilege access models, role-based provisioning, and periodic access reviews.
Develop and enforce IT policies, standards, and procedures — including change management, configuration management, and incident response protocols — to reduce risk and increase repeatability of operations.
Manage backup, replication, and disaster recovery solutions (on-prem and cloud) including runbooks, testing schedules, RTO/RPO verification, and periodic tabletop exercises.
Monitor performance and capacity across systems and networks, produce trend analyses and forecasts, and recommend hardware, platform, or configuration changes to optimize cost and performance.
Serve as primary liaison with vendors and third-party service providers for procurement, contract management, SLA negotiation, escalation, and coordinated support activities.
Oversee desktop and endpoint management, including provisioning, imaging, patching, asset lifecycle management, and secure remote access for hybrid workers.
Own the IT service desk escalation process, ensuring effective incident prioritization, root cause analysis, knowledge base upkeep, and continuous reduction of recurring incidents.
Maintain and document architecture diagrams, runbooks, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and configuration baselines to support operational consistency and auditing needs.
Coordinate with application and business teams for deployments, integrations, and environment provisioning to ensure platform readiness and minimize production downtime.
Manage budgetary planning for infrastructure, licensing, cloud consumption, and vendor services; identify opportunities for cost optimization and report variances to management.
Drive automation efforts using scripting (PowerShell, Bash) and orchestration tools to reduce manual repetitive tasks, improve deployment speed, and minimize human error.
Ensure compliance with data protection, privacy, and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA where applicable) by coordinating audits and remediations with legal and compliance teams.
Participate in executive-level planning for IT strategy, presenting technical plans, risk assessments, and ROI for proposed investments in infrastructure and cloud services.
Facilitate onboarding and offboarding processes for employees and contractors in coordination with HR, ensuring secure provisioning and timely de-provisioning of IT access.
Perform capacity planning and lifecycle management for servers, storage, network equipment, and cloud resources to reduce unplanned outages and procurement lead times.
Lead post-incident reviews and continuous improvement initiatives, documenting lessons learned, correcting process gaps, and tracking remediation actions to closure.
Ensure business continuity by maintaining vendor support agreements, spare inventory levels, and plan updates for emergency response and crisis management.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to help IT leadership identify trends, capacity requirements, and cost drivers.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap by partnering with data engineers and architects to align infrastructure and storage solutions with analytics needs.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements and ensure availability of environments for reporting and BI tools.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team to provide operational perspective and prioritize infrastructure tasks.
Provide mentorship and career coaching to junior IT staff, encouraging certification attainment and cross-training to increase team flexibility.
Assist in evaluating and piloting new technologies (SaaS platforms, IaaS/PaaS offerings, containerization) and produce recommendation reports including risk, cost, and migration strategy.
Maintain up-to-date documentation of cloud resource tagging, billing allocations, and optimization recommendations to improve cost visibility.
Support procurement by defining technical requirements, evaluating vendor proposals, and coordinating proof-of-concept (POC) assessments.
Coordinate cross-functional disaster recovery tests that include application owners, network teams, and business stakeholders, and record outcomes and improvement plans.
Track and report key performance indicators (KPIs) for IT operations such as MTTR, incident volume, system uptime, and change success rate to drive accountability and improvements.
Provide on-call support rotation leadership, ensuring appropriate escalation matrices, knowledge transfer, and post-call reviews for critical incidents.
Assist in preparing IT audit responses, evidence collection, and remediation tracking for internal and external compliance audits.
Support encryption, key management, and secure configuration initiatives for databases, file shares, and cloud storage.
Facilitate vendor-managed service reviews and SLA scorecards to ensure third-party performance aligns with business expectations.
Coordinate infrastructure capacity upgrades in alignment with business cycles (e.g., seasonal demand) to maintain performance during peak periods.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Advanced knowledge of Windows Server and Linux administration, including patching, performance tuning, and troubleshooting production environments.
Experience administering Active Directory, Group Policy, Azure Active Directory, and identity federation/SSO implementations.
Proficiency with virtualization platforms (VMware vSphere, Hyper-V) and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) for efficient workloads.
Strong networking skills: TCP/IP, VLANs, routing, switching, firewalls (Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto), VPNs, and wireless technologies.
Cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) including compute, storage, networking, IAM, and cost management best practices.
Backup and disaster recovery expertise with tools such as Veeam, Commvault, Azure Backup, or native cloud solutions; proven DR planning and testing.
Familiarity with ITSM platforms (ServiceNow, Jira Service Management) and practical application of ITIL processes (incident, problem, change).
Scripting and automation skills (PowerShell, Bash, Python) to automate routine tasks, deployments, and monitoring.
Endpoint management and MDM experience (Microsoft Endpoint Manager/Intune, JAMF) for secure device provisioning and lifecycle management.
Security fundamentals: endpoint protection, patch management, vulnerability scanning, log aggregation (SIEM), and familiarity with compliance frameworks.
Experience with monitoring and observability tools (Nagios, Zabbix, Datadog, Prometheus, Splunk) to detect and remediate performance issues.
Familiarity with storage technologies (SAN, NAS), backup architecture, and performance tuning for database and file workloads.
Vendor and contract management skills for negotiating SLAs, warranties, and support agreements with clear technical requirements.

Soft Skills

Strong leadership and people-management skills with a track record of building high-performing technical teams and fostering a culture of accountability.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills for translating technical concepts to business stakeholders and producing executive summaries.
Proven problem-solving and root-cause analysis capability with a data-driven approach to incident reduction and process improvement.
Project management and prioritization skills to manage simultaneous initiatives and time-sensitive operational demands.
Stakeholder management and customer-service orientation to align IT delivery with business priorities and user expectations.
Adaptability and continuous learning mindset to evaluate new technologies and adjust practices in a fast-evolving IT landscape.
Coaching and mentorship ability to guide junior staff in certifications, technical skills, and career development.
Conflict resolution and negotiation skills for working through vendor disagreements, cross-team dependencies, and resource constraints.
Attention to detail and strong organizational skills for documentation, change control, and audit-readiness.
Initiative and ownership mindset to proactively identify risks and implement preventive measures.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, or a closely related technical field, OR equivalent combined experience.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or Business Information Systems.
Relevant certifications such as ITIL Foundation, CompTIA Network+/Security+, MCSA/MCSE, VMware VCP, AWS/Azure certifications, or Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) for security-focused roles.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Information Technology
Information Systems
Network Engineering
Cybersecurity

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 4–8 years of progressive IT experience with at least 2–3 years in a supervisory or team lead role supporting infrastructure, operations, or networking.

Preferred:

5+ years of hands-on experience in systems, network, or cloud operations with demonstrable project delivery and incident management.
Experience supporting multi-site environments, hybrid cloud architectures, or regulated industries (healthcare, finance) with compliance responsibilities.
Prior experience managing vendor relationships, IT budgets, and operational KPIs.