IT Manager in Mount Prospect, Illinois at Xttrium Laboratories Inc

Position Summary

The IT Manager is the main point of contact between our internal staff, our managed service provider (MSP), and third-party technology vendors. The role makes sure requests are routed correctly, issues are resolved, and vendors deliver on their commitments, while translating business needs into clear technical requests and technical updates into plain language. The manager has enough technical skill to troubleshoot, ask the right questions, and judge whether the MSP’s answers hold up. The manager also supervises one IT support team member.

Key Responsibilities

MSP & Vendor Coordination

• Serve as the primary liaison to the MSP: submit, prioritize and follow up on requests and projects.
• Escalate unresolved or recurring issues and hold the MSP accountable to agreed SLAs.
• Review ticket trends and response times, and take part in regular service reviews.
• Coordinate with third-party vendors (telecom, ISPs, software, hardware and line-of-business application providers) on support issues, installs and changes.
• Maintain vendor contacts, contract dates, renewal dates and license/warranty information, and flag upcoming renewals to leadership.

Internal Stakeholder Support

• Act as the first point of contact for staff on IT needs and escalations.
• Do first-level troubleshooting to understand and clarify an issue before handing it to the MSP, and resolve simple issues directly.
• Communicate outages, maintenance windows and changes in plain language.
• Coordinate onboarding and offboarding, access requests and equipment needs with HR and department heads.
• Gather requirements and set expectations on IT projects.

Team Leadership

• Supervise, coach and evaluate IT support team member(s), setting priorities and workload.
• Make sure support requests are handled promptly and documented.

IT Operations & Documentation

• Keep IT documentation current: asset inventory, network diagrams, procedures, vendor contacts.
• Coordinate project work (upgrades, migrations, rollouts) among the MSP, vendors and internal teams, tracking timelines and next steps.
• Confirm that security practices (MFA, patching, backups, access reviews) are being carried out, and help gather information for audits and compliance requests.
• Participate in incident response and disaster recovery/business continuity planning.
• Provide input on technology needs and recommendations to leadership. Budget decisions remain with [Finance / Executive / other].

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in IT or related field.
• 5 to 8 years of IT experience, including working with an MSP or managing vendor relationships.
• Solid troubleshooting skills and working knowledge of Microsoft 365, Windows environments, networking basics, cloud services and endpoint security.
• Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to explain technical issues to non-technical staff.
• Experience with ticketing systems and IT documentation.
• Strong organization, follow-through and prioritization.
• Ability to supervise and develop a team.

We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We welcome people of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Employment decisions are made based on skills, qualifications, and potential; never on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected trait.

Expected compensation for this role will be between $120,000.00 and $150,000.00 annually on a full-time basis plus applicable health and ancillary benefits offered by the company. Final compensation may vary depending on a number of factors including but not limited to, candidate experience, geographic location, and other affiliated factors.