IT & Systems Manager

Kraus Hamdani Aerospace (KHA) is an aerospace company specializing in long-endurance unmanned aerial platforms for a wide variety of industries. KHA supports a number of customers to carry out missions involving aerial reconnaissance, survey, communication relay and communications provisioning. Endurance, enabled by effective design, is key to these applications and KHA aircraft utilize cutting-edge aircraft design together with on-board intelligence to deliver value for these customers.

Location: Remote, United States

About the Role

Kraus Hamdani Aerospace is seeking a hands-on IT & Systems Manager to own and scale the company's internal technology environment as we continue to grow.

This is a foundational role responsible for both the day-to-day delivery of employee IT support and the development of a secure, reliable, and scalable IT infrastructure. The successful candidate will manage end-user technology, systems administration, access and identity management, hardware and software lifecycle management, IT vendors, and core business applications while continuously identifying opportunities to improve automation, security, reliability, and employee experience.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys operating in a growing environment where they can both solve today's technical problems and build the systems and processes that prevent tomorrow's problems.

Key Responsibilities

IT Operations & Employee Support

• Serve as the primary internal point of contact for employee IT support, troubleshooting hardware, software, account, connectivity, and access issues.
• Own the employee technology onboarding and offboarding process, ensuring equipment and system access are provisioned or removed accurately and on time.
• Configure, deploy, maintain, and support company laptops, peripherals, mobile devices, and other endpoint equipment.
• Establish reliable processes for equipment procurement, configuration, shipping, recovery, replacement, and lifecycle management.
• Maintain accurate hardware, software, licensing, warranty, and asset inventory records.
• Develop service standards and escalation processes to ensure employees receive timely and consistent IT support.

Systems Administration & Identity Management

• Administer the company's core technology platforms, user accounts, permissions, groups, licenses, and application access.
• Establish and maintain scalable identity and access management practices, including role-based access, MFA, SSO, and least-privilege principles where appropriate.
• Manage employee access throughout the full lifecycle from onboarding through role changes and separation.
• Partner with functional leaders to understand system requirements and ensure employees have appropriate access to the tools required for their roles.
• Support integrations and information flow between company systems where appropriate.

IT Infrastructure & Scalability

• Assess the current IT environment and develop a prioritized roadmap for infrastructure, systems, tools, policies, and processes as the company scales.
• Identify technology gaps, redundancies, manual processes, security risks, and opportunities for consolidation or automation.
• Design systems and processes that can support increasing headcount, additional locations, remote employees, contractors, and international operations.
• Establish consistent IT standards across company locations while accommodating legitimate site-specific requirements.
• Evaluate new technology platforms and recommend solutions based on scalability, security, usability, cost, and business requirements.
• Develop appropriate documentation, system inventories, architecture records, operating procedures, and administrative runbooks.

Security & Risk Management

• Implement and maintain practical security controls across endpoints, accounts, applications, and company systems.
• Manage endpoint security, patching, device configuration, encryption, authentication, and related administrative controls.
• Regularly review user access and administrative privileges and address unnecessary or outdated permissions.
• Support company cybersecurity, information-security, and compliance initiatives in partnership with leadership and other responsible stakeholders.
• Assist with security incident response, account compromise, device loss, and other IT-related incidents.
• Help develop and maintain business continuity, backup, recovery, and technology resilience practices.
• Support security and compliance readiness appropriate to an aerospace and defense environment.

SaaS & Business Systems Administration

• Maintain administrative oversight of the company's growing portfolio of business applications and technology vendors.
• Establish clear ownership, access, licensing, renewal, and administrative standards for company systems.
• Work with functional owners across Operations, Engineering, Manufacturing, Finance, People/Talent, and other teams to optimize system configuration and utilization.
• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive administrative workflows and improve integrations between systems.
• Monitor software utilization and licensing to eliminate unnecessary cost and reduce application sprawl.

Vendor & Technology Management

• Manage relationships with IT service providers, hardware suppliers, software vendors, carriers, and other technology partners.
• Hold vendors accountable for service levels, delivery commitments, security requirements, and cost.
• Evaluate when capabilities should be handled internally versus through external specialists or managed service providers.
• Maintain visibility into IT spending and assist leadership with technology budgeting and forecasting.
• Coordinate specialized outside resources when requirements exceed internal expertise.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of progressive experience in IT administration, systems administration, IT operations, infrastructure, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience independently supporting a broad employee technology environment.
• Strong hands-on experience administering user accounts, permissions, endpoints, software, and cloud-based business systems.
• Experience managing employee onboarding/offboarding and IT asset lifecycle processes.
• Working knowledge of identity and access management, MFA, SSO, endpoint security, device management, patching, encryption, and backup/recovery principles.
• Experience administering cloud productivity and collaboration platforms such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or comparable environments.
• Experience with endpoint/device management technologies and modern SaaS administration.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot technical issues across hardware, software, networking, accounts, and applications.
• Experience documenting systems, establishing repeatable procedures, and improving immature or highly manual IT processes.
• Strong vendor-management and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to manage competing priorities independently in a fast-moving environment.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to support employees with varying levels of technical proficiency.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or scaling the IT function within a startup, growth-stage company, or similarly dynamic environment.
• Experience supporting a distributed workforce across multiple offices, remote employees, and international locations.
• Aerospace, defense, government contractor, advanced manufacturing, robotics, or other highly technical industry experience.
• Familiarity with cybersecurity and compliance frameworks applicable to government contractors or regulated environments, such as NIST 800-171, CMMC, or related requirements.
• Experience with automation, scripting, APIs, or low-code workflow tools.
• Experience implementing or administering SSO/IAM, MDM, endpoint protection, ticketing, asset-management, and monitoring platforms.
• Experience participating in technology audits, security assessments, or compliance-readiness initiatives.
• Experience selecting and implementing new IT platforms rather than solely administering established environments.

Personal Attributes

• Hands-on builder: Comfortable moving between strategic planning and direct technical execution.
• Process-oriented: Looks beyond individual problems to identify and correct the process that allowed them to occur.
• Scalability-minded: Considers whether today's solution will continue to work as headcount, locations, and complexity increase.
• Ownership mentality: Takes responsibility for issues from identification through resolution rather than simply escalating them.
• Service-oriented: Understands that reliable IT directly affects employee productivity and experience.
• Security-conscious: Balances usability and speed with appropriate protection of company systems and information.
• Resourceful and adaptable: Comfortable working in an environment where processes and infrastructure are still evolving.
• Strong communicator: Can translate technical risks and recommendations into clear business language for leadership.