Job Description
About the Job:
LaunchDarkly is seeking a Senior Manager, IT (IT Service Desk Engineering) to lead the systems, processes, and people responsible for delivering reliable, scalable internal IT support and endpoint service operations. This role is responsible for managing the service desk engineering function, improving the employee support experience, and building operational processes that help LaunchDarkly scale securely and efficiently.
This leader will manage a small (less than 10) global team in the US, Ireland, and India, to guide execution across service desk tooling, endpoint lifecycle processes, support workflows, knowledge management, and service delivery operations. The role requires translating functional plans into operational processes, setting procedures that affect the department, and partnering across Security, People, Workplace, Procurement, and other IT teams to deliver consistent outcomes.
They will be successful by building a high-performing team, creating clear operational standards, using AI and data to improve service quality and efficiency, and ensuring day-to-day support operations can scale with company needs. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can coach managers and individual contributors, improve systems and processes, and communicate effectively across technical and non-technical audiences.
Responsibilities:
Lead the IT Service Desk Engineering function, including team operations, priorities, staffing, performance management, and day-to-day execution across employee-facing IT support services.
Manage the activities globally, with accountability for execution, workforce planning, and operational delivery.
Translate functional plans into operational processes and guide execution across service desk workflows, endpoint provisioning and deprovisioning, device management, support tooling, ticketing operations, and service request fulfillment.
Establish and improve procedures, standards, and operating rhythms that increase support quality, reduce manual effort, and create a more consistent employee experience.
Define, track, and review service metrics such as response times, resolution times, backlog, escalation rates, self-service adoption, customer satisfaction, asset turnaround times, and recurring issue trends.
Use data from support operations, endpoint management platforms, and employee feedback to identify service gaps, prioritize improvements, and deliver measurable operational results.
Partner closely with Security, Identity and Access Management, Enterprise Applications, Workplace, Procurement, Finance, and People teams to ensure IT support services align with compliance, onboarding, offboarding, access, and workplace operational requirements.
Drive service desk engineering improvements, including the use of AI and automation, workflow design, knowledge base maturity, intake optimization, and tool integrations that improve scale and reduce friction for employees and IT staff.
Ensure high-quality execution of onboarding, offboarding, hardware lifecycle, software access, and office-based support processes for a hybrid workforce.
Create clear escalation paths, incident coordination practices, and ownership models for employee-impacting support issues.
Build team capability through coaching, feedback, role clarity, and development planning for managers and individual contributors.
Communicate operational performance, risks, priorities, and recommendations across disciplines, adapting messaging for technical teams, functional peers, and business stakeholders.
Contribute to policy and procedure changes that affect the IT Service Desk Engineering function.
About You:
You are a power user of AI in the workplace, with a track record of turning tools like Gemini, Claude, Glean, and automation platforms into real operational leverage across support workflows, knowledge management, and employee experience.
You lead with clarity and follow-through. You set expectations, make decisions, and help teams execute against defined goals.
You improve systems, not just tickets. You look for root causes, recurring friction, and process gaps, then create practical solutions.
You use data to guide action. You define meaningful metrics, review patterns, and use evidence to prioritize work and communicate tradeoffs.
You are an effective cross-functional partner. You work well with technical and non-technical teams and can align people around clear operational outcomes.
You coach teams to grow. You give direct, useful feedback, build accountability, and create conditions for managers and individual contributors to succeed.
You care about employee experience and operational excellence equally, and you know how to balance speed, quality, risk, and scale.
Qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience, with sufficient related experience to operate at the Senior Manager level.
Experience leading IT service desk, endpoint engineering, or internal IT operations teams in a growing company, including responsibility for team planning, execution, and service delivery outcomes, with a strong understanding of ITIL-aligned practices including incident, request, change, escalation, and SLA management.
Demonstrated ability to identify, implement, and scale AI-enabled improvements in IT support operations, with sound judgment around governance, data handling, and measurable service outcomes.
Demonstrated experience leading teams and operational processes that rely on platforms such as Jira Service Management, Slack, Google Workspace, Claude, Glean, Okta, Apple Business Manager, and related IT service, identity, and device-management systems.
Experience managing experienced IT professionals across multiple workstreams, with accountability for performance, prioritization, and operational results.
Demonstrated ability to translate functional goals into operational processes, team priorities, support standards, and measurable service outcomes.
Experience overseeing core service desk and endpoint operations such as ticketing systems, knowledge management, hardware lifecycle management, identity-related support coordination, software access workflows, and onboarding/offboarding execution.
Ability to analyze service data, evaluate a variety of factors, and make sound operational decisions on issues of diverse scope.
Experience creating procedures, playbooks, escalation models, and documentation that improve consistency, scalability, and support quality.
Experience partnering across technical and business teams and communicating recommendations effectively across disciplines, including with customers, peer functions, and stakeholders outside their immediate area of expertise.
Strong people leadership skills, including coaching, performance management, feedback, hiring, and organizational planning.
Ability to lead in a hybrid environment and support distributed employees with clear processes, communication, and equitable service delivery.
Specific Requirements:
This role is based in Oakland, California and follows a hybrid working model.
Ability to provide global support leadership for an employee population working across office and remote environments, including periodic travel to our global worksites in the US, Ireland, India.
May require occasional after-hours support coordination for high-priority incidents or critical operational events.
Must be authorized to work in US (no visa sponsorship / relocation)
Bachelors degree, major or minor in computer science, information technology, or similar
Pay:
Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level M3:
- Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle - $136,500 - $187,660**
- Zone 2: Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago - $122,800 - $168,850**
- Zone 3: All other US locations - $116,000 - $159,500**
LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.
*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.
**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.
About LaunchDarkly:
Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong. Developers can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And by gradually rolling out new application components, they escape nightmare “big-bang” technology migrations.
The LaunchDarkly platform was built to guide engineers to the next frontier of DevOps by:
- Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages
- Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts
- Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize
- Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types
- Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams, by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability
At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We’re building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affirmative Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at hr@launchdarkly.com.
Do you need a disability accommodation?
Fill out this accommodations request form and someone from our People Operations team will contact you for assistance.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, LaunchDarkly recruiters will only contact you from @LaunchDarkly.com email addresses or via LinkedIn from “Verified Recruiter” accounts.Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate LaunchDarkly recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before making a job offer. LaunchDarkly will never make a job offer without conducting a formal interview process. Our interview process does not involve asking detailed questions by email. If you are ever unsure about a communication that you receive, don’t click any links—visit Careers | LaunchDarkly directly for confirmed job openings and links to apply.
Please notify us of any fraudulent representation by sending an email to careers@launchdarkly.com.
