Manager, IT and AI

Trico Electric Cooperative; Marana (AZ); On-site; USD 110,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Trico Electric Cooperative is seeking an experienced Manager, IT & AI to lead a multidisciplinary team focused on data, analytics, and AI solutions. This role involves managing IT operations, ensuring endpoint security, and overseeing AI agent development to enhance workforce productivity. The ideal candidate will have significant experience in IT and data science, with a Bachelor’s degree required and a Master’s preferred. Join us to empower our team and support meaningful work in the cooperative’s operations.

Qualifications

• 7-10 years of progressively responsible experience in IT, data, analytics, or related disciplines.
• 3-5 years of leadership experience managing technical teams.
• Proven experience in managing IT operations and help desk functions.

Responsibilities

• Oversee daily IT operations, including help desk performance.
• Manage procurement, deployment, and maintenance of IT equipment.
• Lead development and lifecycle management of AI solutions.

Skills

IT operations management

AI/ML initiatives

Vendor management

Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Data governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or related field

Master's degree preferred

Job description

Join Our Team as a Manager, IT & AI at Trico Electric Cooperative!

We are committed to fostering a culture of excellence, where employees are empowered to grow, collaborate, and contribute to meaningful work. Just as we strive to provide 5-star customer service to our members, we also hold ourselves to the highest standards in how we work and support one another.

What You Will Do:

The IT and AI Manager – Data, Analytics & Agentic AI is responsible for leading a multidisciplinary team delivering data, analytics, and Agentic AI solutions across the electric cooperative. This role oversees departmental IT operations (excluding network administration), including help desk services and end‑user technology, while driving the development and deployment of AI agents that enhance workforce productivity and operational performance.

This position plays a critical leadership role in aligning technology capabilities with business needs, enabling data‑driven decision‑making, managing data governance and advancing the cooperative’s use of AI to support field operations, engineering, member services, and enterprise functions.

Key duties and expectations include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Oversee daily IT operations, including help desk performance, end‑user support, incident resolution, and overall service delivery in alignment with service level objectives.
• Manage the procurement, deployment, maintenance, and lifecycle of computers, mobile devices, peripherals, and related accessories.
• Ensure endpoint security, system patching, updates, and compliance with organizational IT, cybersecurity, and data governance policies.
• Lead the architecture, development, deployment, and lifecycle management of agentic AI solutions, including AI copilots, digital assistants, workflow agents, and knowledge assistants used across the organization.
• Direct AI agent development and orchestration, including use‑case design, prompt engineering, agent chaining, role‑based access, testing, monitoring, and continuous improvement of agent performance and reliability.
• Establish AI governance and operational controls, ensuring AI agents operate within approved guardrails, data‑access constraints, privacy requirements, and organizational trust architecture standards.
• Oversee the design and development of enterprise data architecture, including data pipelines, data warehouses/lakehouses, semantic data models, and integration frameworks supporting analytics and AI use cases.
• Performs other duties as required and/or assigned.

What You Bring to Trico:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field required; Master’s degree preferred.
• Seven (7) to ten (10) years of progressively responsible experience in information technology, data, analytics, or related technology disciplines.
• Three (3) to five (5) years of leadership or supervisory experience managing technical teams.
• Demonstrated experience managing IT operations, including help desk functions and end‑user technology support.
• Proven experience delivering data platforms, analytics solutions, or AI/ML initiatives in a production environment.
• Experience working with cloud platforms and modern data architecture (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) preferred.
• Demonstrated experience in vendor management, procurement processes, and system implementation projects.

Equal Opportunity Employer, including disabled and veterans.