Company Description

About the Organization

KIPP Public Schools is a national network of tuition-free public charter schools that prepares students with the skills and confidence to create the future they want for themselves, their communities, and us all. We are a network of 278 schools, nearly 16,500 educators, and nearly 190,000 students and alumni.

Our mission: Together with families and communities, we create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose—college, career, and beyond—so they can lead fulfilling lives and build a more just world.

Our vision: Every child grows up free to create the future they want for themselves and their communities.

The KIPP Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports KIPP public charter schools across the country. The KIPP Foundation helps to develop outstanding educators to lead KIPP schools; provides tools and resources for excellent teaching and learning; promotes innovation; and facilitates the exchange of insights and ideas across KIPP and other public schools and organizations.

About Our Values:

Excellent Results for Students: We value results over effort and know that our work is not finished until all students thrive. We maintain high expectations for self, team, and students. We drive outcomes by operating with agility, removing barriers, differentiating support, and prioritizing student-centered solutions—especially for those at the margins.

Collective Impact: We are one team. We win together. We embody a one-team mindset by working collaboratively across teams, aligning goals, and leveraging the strengths of all teammates. We build trust-based relationships and ensure inclusive decision-making by engaging those closest to the work. We provide clarity through simple, repeatable systems and goals that enable transformational outcomes.

Courageous Action: Our belief in what we can achieve is unwavering, fueling our optimism and commitment to overcome any challenge. We demonstrate an unwavering belief in students' potential and a commitment to addressing systemic inequities. We approach challenges with resilience, a solutions-focused mindset, and adaptability. We foster a psychologically safe environment centered on trust and accountability where feedback is encouraged. We leverage data to reflect on progress, own setbacks, celebrate successes, and continuously improve to maximize impact.

Job Description

About The Position

The KIPP Foundation is seeking a Senior Director of IT Operations to lead the day-to-day operations of technology, infrastructure, and end-user support services across the KIPP Foundation. In this role, you will oversee core IT operations—including data center and cloud environments, network reliability, vendor coordination, and incident response—ensuring that systems remain resilient, secure, and aligned with organizational needs.

The Senior Director will report to the Vice President of Technology and collaborate closely with Foundation teams, regional IT leaders, and external partners to drive operational excellence. You will lead a team of engineers responsible for IT operations, executing strategic plans, and will serve as a key escalation point for complex technical issues. This role is ideal for a leader who can develop and translate strategic direction into dependable systems and services which will support the Foundation’s mission and day-to-day work. 

Responsibilities

Team Leadership and Development

Lead, coach, and develop a diverse team of IT professionals, fostering a culture of trust, accountability, and high performance.

Promote continuous learning and career growth by implementing professional development plans, mentoring opportunities, and performance feedback loops.

Manage and direct data center and vendor personnel to provide multi-level support and timely resolution of operational issues.

Drive Development and Oversee Execution of the Technology Vision

Partner with technology leadership to develop the Foundation’s long-term technology strategy, contributing operational insight to planning, prioritization, and roadmap development.

Develop and communicate technology goals with leadership and translate into clear, actionable initiatives with defined milestones, ownership, and measurable outcomes.

Align technology operations with the Foundation’s mission and values by integrating scalable, secure, and equitable practices across all systems and services.

Serve as a change agent by championing the adoption of modern technologies, systems, and processes. Lead the rollout of new tools and operational models that improve efficiency, reduce legacy risk, and align with long-term strategic goals.

Set and communicate high-level technical direction, define requirements, and develop implementation plans in alignment with broader strategic initiatives.

Lead change management efforts that ensure successful rollout and adoption of new systems and processes, balancing innovation with user readiness and service continuity.

 Cross-Functional Partnership & Knowledge Sharing

Collaborate with regional IT Directors to understand network technology needs and communicate KF Network technical requirements; this includes:

Meeting with regions tactically around support issues, account creation, access to existing systems

Leading monthly Tech community calls with regions to understand region pain points, and determine what support Foundation can provide or develop that would bring added value to the network.

Brainstorming and developing new initiatives in the technology space to find economies of scale, lower costs, lower barrier to entry, increase quality and visibility for regional IT staff and regional leaders

Serve as a collaborative partner to teams across the Foundation, providing accessible guidance on technology decisions, use cases, and best practices.

Facilitate knowledge sharing and technical onboarding to build organization-wide understanding of IT capabilities, limitations, and support pathways.

Work with internal Foundation departments such as Finance, Talent, and others to understand and support evolving business technology needs.

 Escalation Management & Technical Problem Resolution

Act as the final escalation point for critical incidents, leading coordinated troubleshooting efforts to rapidly restore services and minimize impact.

Analyze root causes of recurring issues, working with internal and vendor teams to implement sustainable fixes and improve system resilience.

Operations Management

Oversee day-to-day IT operations, ensuring high availability, performance, and reliability of infrastructure, networks, and services supporting Foundation staff.

Oversee management and patching activity for a fleet of 100’s of laptops and workstations (PC & Mac)

Track tickets and other reporting metrics to measure service health, identify gaps, and drive continuous improvement across IT operations.

Provide clear, timely reporting on performance metrics, outages, and recommended operational improvements.

Analyze and improve operational processes, identifying deficiencies and implementing best-practice solutions to increase efficiency and response time.

Maintain broad knowledge of all major applications, platforms, and services used across the organization to support effective operational oversight.

Oversee conference room hardware, IT Operations and associated infrastructure for two physical office locations.

Data Center & Cloud Stewardship Operations

Lead and oversee all aspects of data center and cloud operations, including environmental controls, equipment maintenance and cost monitoring.

Apply industry best practices to enhance the resilience, performance, and maintainability of on-premises and cloud environments.

Vendor & Contract Management

Oversee all data center, infrastructure and software contracts, including negotiation of terms, service levels, and pricing with external vendors.

Manage vendors and consultants working within the data center and cloud infrastructure environments to ensure adherence to standards and project timelines.

Conduct evaluations of new technologies prior to contract signing.

Maintain strong working relationships with technology vendors to ensure alignment, quality, and timely delivery of services.

Qualifications

Skills and Mindsets

Mission and Student Focus: Demonstrates passion and commitment to KIPP’s mission and possesses the desire and ability to uphold KIPP’s core values (Focus on Excellent Results, Collective Impact, and Courageous Action)

Achievement & Outcomes Orientation: Demonstrated record of setting ambitious goals and achieving them with consistency. Invests in developing teammates’ skills and mindsets to address gaps in achieving team growth; determines what quantitative and qualitative data are most relevant to their goals and supports the team in creating and monitoring systems for collecting, reviewing, and acting upon data to drive outcomes; able to monitor progress, communicating status to the right stakeholders and adjusting plans and use of time to ensure systems are yielding desired outcomes.

Effective Work Management: Sets a clear vision for new or complex bodies of work. Develops and implements agile project plans, navigating difficult situations or conflicts while maintaining effective relationships with all stakeholders; creates and ensures systems are in place for knowledge management.

Strategic Decision Making and Problem Solving: Efficiently defines the right metrics to evaluate work and ensures critical team actions, decisions, and recommendations are driven by data; effectively works with team to resolve issues around data to ensure sound data-informed decisions. Effectively identifies and addresses root causes to the most important problem.

People Management & Development: Effective at differentiating approaches to develop and coach teammates; skilled in setting managing both performance and development goals; provides timely and actionable feedback to drive teammate development and performance; strategically distributes work based on skill and capacity between self and teammates to ensure the work outcomes of the collective team; able to build a culture of accountability and productive discourse to help teammates achieve at the highest level.

Continuous Learning: Engages in the work of personal development at working, knowing that personal development is ongoing and vital to their personal and professional success; hold themselves accountable to evolving, growing, learning and unlearning in ways that improve results for students, adults, and the larger community.

Self-Awareness: Practices self-awareness at work, understanding that it is foundational to leading self, leading people, and leading results; uses reflection, self-understanding, and feedback to grow, and persist through challenges, and as a result, are cognizant of the impact of their behavior on others, and intentional about the decision to adjust or not adjust their behaviors. Displays an owner’s mindset by taking ownership of successes and failure.

Experience and Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field required; advanced degree or certifications preferred. At least 10 years of progressive experience in IT, including 5+ years in an operational leadership role managing infrastructure, support teams, or systems engineering functions.

Proven track record overseeing multi-platform, 24/7 infrastructure environments—including data center, cloud, and network operations. Experience leading Tier 2/3 support teams and managing through escalation, recovery, and resolution.

Deep hands-on knowledge of Microsoft infrastructure (Windows Server, AD/Entra ID, M365, SQL Server), virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V), and cloud environments (Azure). Comfortable managing networks (LAN/WAN, routing/switching), enterprise storage, and backup systems.

Experience with computer networking and firewalls including understanding of VLANs, subnets, firewall rules and ACLs

Experience implementing and maintaining high-availability systems, monitoring platforms (e.g., PRTG, Azure Monitor), and job automation for proactive service management.

Experience using tools such as Zendesk, Jira, or ServiceNow to track SLAs and drive operational accountability.

Knowledge of endpoint management platforms, security tools and experience supporting security, identity, and compliance initiatives (e.g., patching, access control, data loss prevention, endpoint protection).

Experience planning and executing mid-to-large scale infrastructure upgrades, cloud migrations, and systems modernization efforts. Skilled at balancing technical priorities, timelines, team management, and IT system monitoring.

Strong interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and build trust across cross-functional teams.

Preferred

Hands-on experience with modern enterprise platforms, including Microsoft Azure, VMware, and Cisco UCS infrastructure.

Experience working in agile, solution-oriented teams within mission-driven organizations.

Professional certifications such as Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator/Architect, Cisco CCNP/CCIE, VMware VCP, or ITIL.

Background managing hybrid infrastructure environments that span both physical data centers and public cloud providers.

Familiarity with Salesforce or other enterprise applications is also beneficial.

Experience supporting education, nonprofits, or distributed organizations with diverse stakeholders

Additional Information

Work Conditions

Travel requirements: 15%

Full-time, Exempt role

Location

It is preferred, but not mandatory for this role to be based out of a KIPP Foundation office. This role also has the option of working from a remote office full-time. KIPP Foundation offices are in NYC and Chicago.

Compensation and Benefits

In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles in locations where legally required. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors, including but not limited to external market data, internal equity, and relevant experience. The salary range for this position is $150,000 - $181,000. In addition, KIPP Foundation provides a variety of benefits to employees, including: 

25 holidays for + 18 days additional flexible PTO days (flexible PTO increases to 23 days for years 3 and 4 and to 28 days for years 5+).

100% paid parental leave

100% coverage of the premium for employee and 75% for employee + family’s medical/dental/vision plans.

Wellness benefits such as fitness reimbursements, discounted tickets to theme parks/attractions, backup care support for children and adults/elders, and our employee assistance program

Finance Security benefits include such as a 401K retirement plan with 4% match, employer-sponsored legal plans, life/disability insurance, and flexible spending accounts

KIPP Foundation embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the students and communities with whom we work and the world that’s around them. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.

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