Director of IT Services | W2/1099 | Applicant Must Be Current MS Resident

NOTE: APPLICANT MUST BE ON OUR W2 OR 1099 AND CURRENT MS RESIDENT. NOT ACCEPTING SUB-VENDORS.

Local Candidate Required

JOB DESCRIPTION

POSTING TITLE                      Director of IT Services

DESIRED CAREER LEVEL     SME

EDUCATION LEVEL                Bachelors

REMOTE OPTION                   100% Onsite Required, Do NOT submit remote

candidates.

INTERVIEW                              MS Teams or In-Person

DURATION                               12 Months

OVERTIME                               Not Required

EXPENSES REIMBURSED     No

ON-CALL REQUIRED             Yes, the contractor shall be available for after-hours

support during major incidents, planned maintenance

windows, and critical system events. Response time

shall not exceed thirty (30) minutes for critical severity

incidents.

TRAVEL FREQUENCY            Occasional; In/Out of state

CRIMINAL/DRUG BACKROUND CHECK REQUIREMENT             Background Check

Description:

The State of Mississippi Agency administers the state's Medicaid program, providing healthcare coverage to eligible Mississippians. Agency's Office of Information Technology Management supports the agency's mission through enterprise technology services spanning cloud infrastructure, networking, service desk operations, cybersecurity, application integration, and vendor management.

The agency is undergoing a significant technology modernization effort that includes migration of enterprise workloads to cloud platforms, implementation of federal interoperability mandates, adoption of cloud-native services, and restructuring of IT service delivery operations. These concurrent transformation initiatives require sustained, senior-level technical leadership to ensure continuity of operations, effective vendor coordination, and successful execution of modernization objectives.

The purpose of this Statement of Work (SOW) is to procure staff augmentation services for one (1) Director of IT Services to provide executive-level leadership and operational oversight for agency's enterprise IT Infrastructure Management (ITIM) and Delivery Services functions. The contractor shall serve as a key member of agency's IT leadership team, reporting to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and/or Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and shall be responsible for the day-to-day management of infrastructure operations, cloud services, vendor relationships, service

desk operations, and technology modernization initiatives.

SCOPE OF SERVICES:

The contractor shall provide leadership and operational management across the following functional domains: Enterprise Cloud Services; Network, Voice & Telecommunications; IT Service Desk & End-User Support; Infrastructure & Operations; Cybersecurity Partnership & Compliance; Vendor & Contract Management; and IT Services Management & Governance. The scope encompasses both ongoing operational responsibilities and active modernization initiatives.

Enterprise Cloud Services:

·       Provide strategic and operational leadership for agency's enterprise cloud environment, including infrastructure provisioning, platform services, identity integration, monitoring, and capacity management.

·       Oversee cloud migration activities, including coordination with cloud professional services teams, managed migration vendors, and agency internal teams.

·       Establish and enforce governance for cloud adoption, architecture standards, cost management, security compliance, and operational procedures.

·       Manage cloud account provisioning, vendor onboarding to cloud environments, and service ticket workflows for cloud service requests.

·       Develop strategies for disaster recovery, high availability, and technology resiliency within cloud environments.

·       Monitor cloud consumption, performance, and costs; identify and implement optimization opportunities.

·       Provide strategic and operational leadership for agency's enterprise cloud environment, including infrastructure provisioning, platform services, identity integration, monitoring, and capacity management.

Network, Voice & Telecommunications:

·       Direct enterprise network and telecommunications operations supporting statewide Medicaid business functions, including LAN/WAN, wireless, Internet connectivity, remote access, and unified communications.

·       Oversee load balancing and DNS provisioning for application environments.

·       Coordinate with telecommunications carriers, managed service providers, and technology vendors to ensure service-level requirements are met.

·       Lead modernization of network infrastructure to support cloud services, mobility, and evolving security requirements.

·       Manage network access restoration and firewall rule change requests through ITS coordination.

IT Service Desk & End-User Support:

·       Lead the enterprise IT service desk and end-user support organization, including client support technicians and supervisory staff.

·       Establish and monitor service desk KPIs: first-contact resolution, response times, resolution times, backlog management, and customer satisfaction.

·       Oversee incident escalation, major incident management, and post-incident review processes.

·       Manage ITS Service Center ticket workflows for agency, including cloud and hosted application service categories.

·       Develop self-service capabilities, knowledge management, and automation to improve employee technology experience.

Infrastructure & Operations:

·       Provide leadership for enterprise infrastructure operations, including compute, storage, virtualization, operating systems, backup, monitoring, and related platforms.

·       Ensure critical infrastructure is monitored and maintained to established availability and performance standards.

·       Lead infrastructure modernization and technology lifecycle management, including hardware refresh strategies and capacity planning.

·       Establish effective backup, recovery, redundancy, and disaster recovery capabilities.

·       Manage assessment artifact collection and compliance documentation for infrastructure domains.

Cybersecurity Partnership & Compliance:

·       Partner with the CIO/CTO and cybersecurity teams to ensure infrastructure and services meet state and federal security requirements.

·       Ensure IT operations comply with HIPAA, CMS, and Mississippi ITS security policies.

·       Support implementation of security controls across cloud, network, infrastructure, and endpoint environments.

·       Participate in risk assessments, audits, compliance reviews, vulnerability remediation, and security initiatives.

·       Coordinate with the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) and ITS on shared security documentation and architecture standards.

Vendor & Contract Management:

·       Provide executive oversight of technology vendors, managed service providers, and cloud partners.

·       Lead vendor coordination for active contracts and procurement activities, including SOW development, brand specification forms, and contract negotiations.

·       Monitor vendor performance, deliverables, financial commitments, and contractual compliance.

·       Manage vendor escalations and remediation of significant service issues.

·       Support IT procurement processes, including solicitation review, proposal evaluation, and vendor selection.

IT Service Management & Governance:

·       Establish operational governance processes for incident, problem, change, configuration, request, and service-level management.

·       Develop and maintain an enterprise service catalog defining technology services, ownership, service levels, and support models.

·       Develop dashboards and executive-level reporting that communicate IT service health, risks, performance trends, and improvement initiatives.

·       Lead Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) development and maintenance for ITIM domains.

·       Facilitate weekly status reporting and leadership coordination meetings.

AGENCY TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT:

The contractor shall possess working knowledge and demonstrated proficiency with the following platforms, tools, and systems that comprise agency's current and target-state technology environment.

Cloud & Infrastructure Platforms

Platform                                                       Usage at agency       

Amazon Web Services (AWS)             Primary enterprise cloud platform. Active migration

from on-premises virtualization. Includes EC2, S3,

RDS, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, Landing Zone, and

multiple workload accounts.             

Cohesity                                                        Enterprise cloud backup, data management, and

data protection services.      

VMware                                                          Legacy virtualization platform (active migration to

AWS). Includes vSphere, vCenter, and related

management tools.  

Microsoft Azure / M365                         Azure AD / Entra ID for identity services. Microsoft

365 for enterprise productivity, Exchange Online,

SharePoint, Teams.   

Monitoring, Observability & Security        

Platform                                                       Usage at agency       

Dynatrace                                                     Enterprise application performance monitoring and

observability platform.           

Cloudflare                                                    CDN, DDoS protection, and web application firewall

services.          

Microsoft Security                                    Monthly security update release management and

distribution across agency endpoints.         

Networking & Identity          

Platform                                                       Usage at agency       

F5 BIG-IP                                                       Load balancing, DNS provisioning, and application

delivery for critical environments.   

Auth0                                                              Identity and authentication platform for API access

management and portal authentication.    

Cisco Meraki                                               Wireless access point infrastructure and lifecycle

management.              

Active Directory / Entra ID                    Enterprise directory services and identity

governance.  

Applications, Databases & Integration   

Platform                                                       Usage at agency       

MarkLogic                                                     NoSQL database for clinical and provider data

management and integration.           

GitLab                                                             Source code management and CI/CD pipelines.        

FHIR APIs                                                      Federal interoperability APIs for Patient Access,

Provider Directory, and Prior Authorization.              

Cloverleaf                                                     Integration engine for healthcare data exchange.       

Collaboration & Service Management     

Platform                                                       Usage at agency       

ITS Service Center                                    Mississippi ITS enterprise ticketing system for cloud,

hosted application, DNS, firewall, and account

provisioning requests.            

Smartsheet                                                  Project tracking, scheduling, and workflow

management.              

Microsoft SharePoint                              Document management for project artifacts,

meeting recordings, and compliance

documentation.          

Lexmark Cloud Print                                Enterprise cloud print management solution.              

KEY DUTIES:

The contractor shall perform the following duties on an ongoing basis:

·       Manage daily IT infrastructure operations, ensuring availability and performance of all enterprise systems and services.

·       Triage, assign, and track service tickets submitted for agency cloud, hosting, and network services.

·       Coordinate with network and systems administration teams on DNS changes, firewall rules, account provisioning, and access management.

·       Lead incident response for major technology outages and service disruptions, including root cause analysis and corrective action.

·       Manage vendor relationships through regular status calls, performance reviews, and escalation management.

·       Review and contribute to Statements of Work, procurement documents, and contract renewals.

·       Conduct interviews and manage hiring processes for infrastructure and client support positions.

·       Develop and update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all ITIM service areas.

·       Prepare and deliver weekly status reports to IT leadership.

·       Manage bi-annual assessment artifact collection and compliance documentation.

REPORTING STRUCTURE:

·       The contractor shall report directly to the agency Chief Information Officer (CIO) and/or Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

·       The contractor shall participate in agency IT leadership meetings, weekly status report cadence, and executive briefings as required.

·       The contractor shall coordinate regularly with network administration, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, IT procurement, and application development teams.

SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS:

·       The contractor shall pass a background investigation as required by the State of Mississippi and agency prior to commencing work.

·       The contractor shall comply with all HIPAA Privacy and Security Rule requirements, including safeguarding of Protected Health Information (PHI) and electronic PHI (ePHI).

·       The contractor shall comply with CMS Acceptable Risk Controls for Automated Medicaid Program Eligibility (ARC-AMPE) and all applicable federal security requirements.

·       The contractor shall adhere to Mississippi ITS security policies, standards, and procedures.

·       The contractor shall complete all required security awareness training within thirty (30) days of onboarding and annually thereafter.

·       The contractor shall execute a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and any additional confidentiality agreements required by agency.

·       The contractor shall not remove, copy, or transmit agency data, documents, or systems information without prior written authorization.

·       Upon termination or completion of the engagement, the contractor shall return all agency property, credentials, and access shall be revoked within one (1) business day.

REQUIRED SKILLS/EXPERIENCE:

Provide the minimum required skills and/or experience the contractor must possess to qualify for this position. These requirements will be transferred to the Score Sheet and candidates without these requirements reflected on their resume will

NOT be presented to the manager for consideration.

The successful resource will have five or more years of experience with the following skills:

Qualification                                              Requirement

·       Experience with progressive information technology, including significant experience managing enterprise IT operations and infrastructure.    10+ Years       

·       Experience in leadership or management, including direct supervision of technical teams, managers, engineers, and support personnel.        8+ Years       

·       Demonstrated experience managing enterprise cloud environments, with specific experience in Amazon Web Services (AWS) including

·       EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and Landing Zone architectures.   2 Years       

·       Strong understanding of enterprise networking, including LAN/WAN, DNS, load balancing, wireless infrastructure, and telecommunications.   2 Years       

·       Experience with enterprise monitoring and observability platforms. 2 Years       

·       Experience managing IT service desk operations, including service-level management, incident management, and customer satisfaction measurement.      2 Years              

·       Experience with IT vendor management, contract oversight, SOW development, and procurement support.          2 Years              

·       Experience managing data protection and backup solutions.              2 Years       

·       Strong understanding of cybersecurity principles, compliance frameworks, and IT governance in a regulated environment.              2 Years              

·       Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability

·       to translate technical issues into business-level communications for executive audiences.        2 Years              

·       Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or a related field; or equivalent work experience.            Bachelors or Higher 

Preferred/Not Required

Provide any skills/experience that would be helpful for the candidate to possess but not required. Examples: Previous supervisory experience, WebLogic experience helpful, etc.

Business Skill Set     Requirement

·       Experience working in state or federal government IT environments, preferably within a Medicaid, healthcare, or human services agency.            No minimum requirement

·       Experience with CMS interoperability mandates, including FHIR APIs and federal healthcare data exchange standards.  No minimum requirement

·       AWS certifications: Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator, or Cloud Practitioner.            No minimum requirement

·       ITIL v4 Foundation or higher certification.          No minimum requirement

·       Experience with identity and access management platforms.             No minimum requirement

·       Experience with NoSQL databases and healthcare integration engines.       No minimum requirement

·       Experience with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices.  No minimum requirement

·       Experience managing technology migrations from on-premises data centers to cloud environments.   No minimum requirement

·       Project Management Professional (PMP) or similar certification.       No minimum requirement

·       Master's degree in a technology or management discipline.  No minimum requirement

Experience with HIPAA Security Rule compliance and CMS ARC-AMPE security requirements.               No minimum requirement