Guild Education
Director, IT
CISM
CISSP
OAuth
Edtech.com's Summary
Guild is hiring a Director, IT. This role leads IT Operations and IT Services, managing infrastructure and employee support while integrating AI strategies to ensure secure, scalable, and efficient technology systems that support business growth.
Highlights
- Lead IT Operations (infrastructure, backend) and IT Services (employee support, experience) teams.
- Develop and execute long-term IT roadmap aligned with business objectives.
- Manage IT budget, vendor relationships, and SaaS license optimization.
- Oversee cloud identity and access management (IAM) with a zero-trust security approach.
- Partner with AI engineering teams to design and implement AI agent infrastructure.
- Own IT security posture, compliance efforts including SOC2, and disaster recovery planning.
- Drive automation for employee onboarding/offboarding via integrations with HRIS (Workday), identity platforms (Okta/Azure), and core SaaS tools.
- Serve as escalation point for IT incident response and lead post-incident analysis.
- Require 7+ years IT infrastructure experience with 3+ years in management; strong skills in IAM, endpoint security, networking, and compliance frameworks (NIST CSF, SOC2, SOX).
- Compensation includes $200,000-$225,000 base salary plus bonus eligibility and stock options.
Director, IT Full Description
At Guild, we believe talent is everywhere and that opportunity should be too. We continue to have our home and headquarters in Denver, but we have embraced a distributed model of working to reach the best talent in the United States. While some roles may require proximity to our Denver office, roles based outside of our Denver office can sit in any of the following 32 states: AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI and Washington D.C. Please only apply if you are able to live and work full-time in one of the states listed above. State locations and specifics are subject to change as our hiring requirements shift.
If you are an Internal Candidate, please apply via our Internal Job Board.
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To thrive as a company and meet our impact goals, we must cultivate a culture of high-performance. We know managers are often the single-largest driver of employee satisfaction and growth, and our talent is our biggest asset. Because of that, we’ve identified consistent expectations for all of Guild’s people managers — helping you know what to expect from your experience here.
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As the Director, IT, you will be the operational backbone of our technology ecosystem. Reporting to the Senior Director, IT, you will lead two critical pillars: IT Operations (Infrastructure & Backend) and IT Services (Employee Support & Experience). You aren't just "keeping the lights on"—you are architecting the infrastructure that supports a next-generation, AI-integrated workforce.
In this role, you will bridge the gap between high-level AI strategy and day-to-day technical stability, ensuring our internal systems are secure, scalable, and frictionless.
Key Responsibilities:
- Strategic Leadership & Function Management
- Define and execute the long-term roadmap for both IT Operations and IT Services, ensuring technology initiatives directly support business growth.
- Provide high-level mentorship and professional development for the managers leading the Ops and Services functions.
- Manage the IT budget, vendor partnerships, and SaaS license procurement/optimization in close collaboration with our APM team.
- Cloud Infrastructure & "Agent" Readiness
- Own the strategy for Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM), ensuring a "zero-trust" approach to security.
- Special Focus: Partner closely with the AI/Agent Engineering teams to architect the "Agent Infrastructure." You will ensure our internal AI agents have the secure, programmatic access they need to interact with our SaaS ecosystem and data layers.
- Security, Compliance, and Governance
- Serve as the primary owner for internal IT security posture (SSPM, endpoint protection, disaster recovery) in partnership with Infosec.
- Lead IT’s role in compliance efforts (e.g., SOC2), ensuring all systems and access protocols meet rigorous audit standards.
- Automation & Service Excellence
- Drive a "zero-touch" philosophy for the employee lifecycle—automating onboarding and offboarding through deep integrations between HRIS (Workday), Identity (Okta/Azure), and our core SaaS applications.
- Ensure the IT Services team maintains exceptional SLAs, providing a modern, "white-glove" support experience for a global workforce.
- Incident Response & Operational Resilience
- Own IT Incident Response: Serve as the primary point of escalation for critical service disruptions. You will establish the protocols for rapid identification, triage, and resolution to ensure minimal business impact.
- Post-Incident Excellence: Drive a culture of "post-incident learning." You will oversee root-cause analysis (RCA) and blameless post-mortems to ensure we are continuously hardening our systems against future failures.
Who You Are:
- The Experienced Leader: You have 7+ years in IT, with 3-5 years specifically leading other managers. You are an expert at empowering your leadership team to handle day-to-day operations while you focus on high-level technical and organizational strategy.
- Builder Instinct: You are excited by the "Agent Infra" challenge. You understand that the IT of 2026 involves managing both human users and AI agents.
- The Cloud Architect: You don't think in terms of servers; you think in terms of APIs, Integrations, and Identity. You have a proven track record of managing complex, SaaS-heavy environments.
- Automation-First Leader: You believe that if a manual task has to be performed twice, it should be automated. You have experience with workflow automation and IaC concepts.
- Modern Security Mindset: You treat security as a fundamental feature of great IT, not a hurdle. You are comfortable securing environments where both humans and AI agents are active users.
Qualifications:
- 7+ years of hands-on technical experience in IT infrastructure/operations, ideally in a growth-stage or mid-size SaaS/platform company
- 3+ years of people management experience in IT, including managing managers or multiple functional teams (ops + services)
- Strong foundation in identity and access management — Okta or equivalent
- Experience managing endpoint security, MDM strategy, network architecture, and ZTNA
- Working knowledge of NIST CSF, SOC 2, and SOX compliance requirements
- Proficient in scripting, API tools, and IT automation workflows
- Familiarity with the AI agent ecosystem: integration platforms, API authentication patterns, MCP servers, or similar agent-to-system connectivity tooling
Nice to Haves:
- Experience with Cloudflare Zero Trust, Twingate, or similar ZTNA platforms
- Hands-on experience with agent authentication patterns (OAuth for non-human identities, service accounts at scale)
- CISSP, CISM, or equivalent certification
- Experience with AI tooling governance — managing enterprise licenses, usage policies, and security controls for AI products
The Pillars You'll Lead:
- IT Operations (Core Platforms & Infrastructure): Focused on the "digital backbone"—SaaS orchestration, cloud identity (IAM), security engineering, and automated provisioning. This team ensures our cloud environment is secure, integrated, and scalable.
- IT Services (Employee Experience): Focused on the "user layer"—the service desk, hardware lifecycle management, and ensuring technology is an enabler, not a hurdle, for our employees.
Success in 6 Months Looks Like:
- You have established a high-velocity operational cadence across both the Operations and Services functions.
- The "Agent Infrastructure" roadmap is defined and being actively implemented in partnership with the AI team.
- You have completed a comprehensive optimization of our IAM and SaaS security workflows, significantly reducing manual overhead.
Why This Role Matters:
Every company is going to face the question of how AI agents interact with their enterprise systems. Most IT teams are still thinking about this as a future problem. At Guild, it's happening now — we have agents in production, an internal AI platform, and an executive team that's pushing the frontier. This role shapes how Guild builds the infrastructure for that future while keeping the fundamentals excellent.
Compensation:
We are committed to equal pay for equal work and believe in compensation transparency. All salary ranges are standardized nationwide and will not vary by region. This role offers a competitive total compensation package, including a base salary of $200,000-$225,000 PLUS variable (bonus) compensation eligibility and stock options. Compensation offered will be based on a combination of factors such as experience, competencies, and internal equity.
Posting Date: April 15, 2026
*This role will stay open for a minimum of 3 days.
*This role will stay open for a minimum of 3 days.
Guild partners with the country’s most innovative employers, including Chipotle, Target, Walgreens, JPMorgan Chase, Hilton, Spectrum, PepsiCo, Tyson, and more, to build the talent needed for today and a resilient workforce for tomorrow. Guild helps employers identify, develop, and mobilize internal talent, enabling workers to gain skills for in-demand roles and companies to stay agile.
By connecting employees to real-world learning, coaching, and career support, and providing companies with actionable talent insights, Guild transforms all talent into high-impact contributors and positions companies for long-term, sustainable growth. For more information, visit https://www.guild.com.
Guild is a female-founded, certified B Corp. The company has been recognized by Fortune’s Change the World list (2021, 2025), the Forbes Cloud 100 (2020–2025), Great Place to Work (2022–2025), CNBC’s Disruptor 50 (2021–2024), TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies (2022), Inc.’s Best-Led Companies (2021), Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas (2020), and B Lab’s Best for the World (2019), among many others.
Guild is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let your recruiter know. We currently offer the following benefits:
- Access to low-cost, high-quality health care options through Collective Health and Kaiser (due to coverage limitations, Kaiser is currently only available in CA & CO)
- Access to a 401k to help save for the future
- Vacation policy to rest and recharge
- 8 days of fully-paid sick leave, to take the time to heal and or recover
- Family-friendly benefits, including 12 weeks of parental leave for non-birthing parents and 18-20 weeks for birthing parents; 4-week ramp-up period for when employees return from a leave of 6 weeks or more; as well as employer-paid short-term and long-term disability, employer-sponsored life insurance, fertility and caregiving benefits.
- Well-rounded wellness benefits including free and low cost mental health resources and financial wellbeing support services
- Education benefits and tuition assistance to help your future development and growth
PRIVACY NOTICE
I understand that I am applying for employment with Guild and am being asked to provide information in connection with my application. I further understand that Guild gathers this information through a third-party service provider and that Guild may use other service providers to assist in the application process. Guild may share my information with such third-party service providers in connection with my application and for the start of employment.
I understand and agree to Guild's use of my information in accordance with Guild's Privacy Policy and, for applicants that are residents of the State of California, Guild's Applicant Privacy Notice and California Notice at Collection.
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