IT Operations Lead

Atypical; Northern (KY); Remote; USD 83,000 - 152,000; Part time

Job summary

Atypical is hiring for a part-time contractor to own IT operations and the service desk for a growing client portfolio. You will ensure timely access requests, device issues, patches, and audits are handled with thorough documentation and senior judgment.

You will use Serval to automate tier-1 workflows, design systems, tune automation, and handle exceptions. This role is remote, US-based, 20–30 hours per week with a path toward contract-to-hire or partnership as the book grows.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on IT operations experience across the full stack.
• Ability to design and optimize automation workflows.
• Experience working with AI-enabled IT service platforms is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own service desk and IT operations for a client portfolio with strong judgment.
• Architect and optimize automation; manage non-automatable edge cases.
• Document SOPs and runbooks to ensure consistency and scalablity.

Skills

Endpoint management

Identity and access

Endpoint security

SaaS administration

Network and access

Security operations

Documentation and process design

Tools

Serval

Console

Job description

Atypical · Remote (US) · Part-time contractor (20–30 hrs/week) with path to contract-to-hire or partnership

What We're Building

The traditional MSP model — bundle software licenses, mark them up, throw junior techs at ticket queues, scale by adding bodies — is starting to break. AI is absorbing the repeatable tier-1 and tier-2 work that justified that headcount. License markups are getting harder to defend as clients want to own their tooling. And the PE rollup wave has produced MSPs that are optimizing for margin in ways their clients can feel.

What we think replaces it: boutique, senior-heavy IT firms operating as fractional IT teams, using AI to handle the repeatable work and putting senior judgment on the rest. Smaller books per firm. Higher trust per relationship. No license arbitrage. No tiered service desks where the client's problem ricochets through three queues before it lands on someone qualified.

That's Atypical. We serve startups and modern SMBs as their IT and security team — not as a vendor pitching upsells, but as the operators who actually run the function. Clients own their tooling. We bring the engineering, the operations, and the judgment.

We're not the only firm pointing at this shift, and we don't think we have it fully figured out. But we're building accordingly, and we're looking for someone to build it with us.

Where We Are Right Now

Honest snapshot: Atypical has real clients, real revenue, and a clear thesis. It also has a founder who's still doing too much of the day-to-day operations himself, which is the bottleneck on growth.

This hire exists to change that. The goal is to move from reactive (founder firefighting across clients) to proactive (an operator owning the function, founder focused on deepening client relationships and building the business). The systems and tooling exist in working form; they need someone to run them, document them, refine them, and make them genuinely scalable.

If you want to step into a polished, fully-built operation, this isn't it. If you want to take ownership of a function that's already working but needs a real operator behind it, that's the role.

The Role

You will own IT operations and the service desk for Atypical's client portfolio. When a client has an access request, a device issue, a patching gap, or an audit deadline, you're the person who makes sure it's handled — well, on time, and documented.

You'll be equipped with Serval to automate tier-1 support and routine workflows. Your job isn't ticket-pushing. It's designing the systems, tuning the automation, handling what doesn't automate cleanly, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks. The AI does the volume; you bring the judgment.

This is a part-time contractor role: roughly 20–30 hours per week to start, with day-to-day flexibility. If we work well together and grow the business, there's a real path to contract-to-hire or a partnership stake.

The Bar Is High

We've tried to fill this role before with people who had partial experience — strong at support, or strong at junior systems work, but not the full breadth. It hasn't worked. The role demands someone who can move fluidly across the entire IT and security stack and exercise senior judgment about what matters.

We're not looking for someone with potential. We're looking for someone who has already done this kind of work and is ready to run it for us.

Concretely, you should be the kind of operator who can:

• Audit a client's environment across MDM, identity, endpoint security, network, and SaaS, and tell us what's broken and what to fix first
• Diagnose an issue that touches three systems at once without flinching
• Read between the lines of an ambiguous client request and know which clarifying question actually matters
• Decide what's worth doing now, what's worth automating, and what's worth ignoring — and defend the call
• Close loops without being asked, prompted, or reminded

If you've spent your career mostly in tier-1 support or building one part of the stack, this role probably isn't a fit yet.

Hours Scale With the Book

Your hours scale with our client base. As we sign new clients and deepen existing engagements, hours grow. If the book shrinks, hours contract. That's the honest shape of a small services firm, and it's why we want a partner-minded operator rather than someone looking for a fixed-hours gig. The better we deliver, the more this role grows.

What You'll Own

Service desk operations — End-user support escalations across our client base, working alongside Serval's automation layer. Triage, routing, and QA on automated ticket resolution. Client-facing communication when issues require a human touch.

IT operations across clients — Asset and inventory management (MDM, ABM, identity providers, SaaS). Access management, including onboarding, offboarding, role changes, and periodic access reviews. Patch and vulnerability management. Audit log review and security event triage. Endpoint compliance and configuration drift.

Process and documentation — Building and maintaining SOPs. Identifying what should be automated next and partnering on the implementation. Keeping our internal documentation honest.

What This Role Is Not

• Not a tier-1 support role. Serval handles that.
• Not a ticket-pusher role. We need someone designing the system, not working inside it reactively.
• Not a learning role. We don't have the bandwidth to teach the fundamentals.
• Not a "wait for the founder to assign tasks" role. If you need work handed to you, this won't go well for either of us.

How We Think About AI

AI is the structural bet behind this whole model. We want someone who uses AI to draft, summarize, accelerate research, write code, and multiply output — and who knows exactly when to slow down, verify, and apply human judgment.

Not AI skepticism. Not blind trust. An operator who can do the work of two people while maintaining the rigor of one careful one.

What We're Looking For

Hands-on operational depth across most of the following:

• Endpoint management — Apple-heavy fleets via Jamf, Kandji, or Intune; ABM/ABE; configuration profiles; compliance baselines
• Identity and access — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Okta, Google Cloud Identity, JumpCloud, or Entra; SSO, SCIM, conditional access, lifecycle automation
• Endpoint security — EDR/MDR tooling, vulnerability management, posture monitoring
• SaaS administration — the full sprawl, including the long tail
• Network and access — Zero Trust platforms (Cloudflare, Tailscale, Twingate), DNS filtering, secure web gateways
• Security operations — log review, audit trails, alert triage, incident response basics
• Documentation and process design — SOPs, runbooks, knowledge bases other people can actually use

You don't need to be the deepest expert in every one. You do need to operate competently across all of them and know when to go deeper or call for help.

You also need self-direction, judgment under ambiguity, documentation discipline, and a real working relationship with AI tools — built on use, not enthusiasm.

Helpful but not required: MSP or in-house IT leadership experience (especially if you've felt the pain of the model we're building away from). Experience with Serval, Console, or similar platforms. Familiarity with CIS Controls. Scripting (Bash, Python, or PowerShell).

How We Work

• Remote, US-based, async by default
• Roughly 4–6 hours per day, flexible on timing — outcomes over seat time
• Month-to-month client agreements; we earn renewal every month
• Documentation-first — every recurring task has an SOP
• Clients own their tool licenses; our value is the engineering and operational judgment

Compensation

Hourly contract rate, commensurate with experience and operational depth. We pay for breadth and judgment, not hours logged — a senior operator who solves a thorny problem in two hours is more valuable than someone who logs eight. We don't bundle software margin into our rates. If the relationship grows into contract-to-hire or a partnership stake, comp evolves accordingly.

• A summary of an IT operations function you've owned end-to-end — what was broken, what you changed, what you'd do differently
• Documentation, SOPs, or runbooks you're proud of (redacted is fine)
• A cross-domain problem you solved — something that touched multiple systems and required judgment about what to fix and in what order
• How you've used AI tools meaningfully in your work, including a moment where you caught something AI got wrong
• Your take on where the IT services industry is heading
• What you're looking for in your next role

We read every application personally. Expect a real reply.