On-Site IT Service Desk Lead — Secure Operations

Penn State University; University Park (TX); On-site; USD 62,000 - 94,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

75% tuition discount

Comprehensive benefits

Paid time off

Retirement plans

Job summary

Penn State University—Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) in State College, PA, seeks an IT Technical Support Supervisor for our secure environments. You will lead a Tier 1 IT support team, govern incident workflows, and train staff, including student employees, to ensure high-quality service.

The role emphasizes DoD/NIST standards, security clearances, and strong coordination with IT and project teams. This is a fully on-site position in State College with comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

• Associate degree or equivalent with 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience with incident/problem/change management and ITSM workflows.
• Strong customer service mindset and ability to translate technical concepts for users.

Responsibilities

• Lead and supervise an IT support team (Tier 1); manage queues, tickets, SLAs, and coaching.
• Coordinate operational governance; maintain knowledge base and runbooks; standardize triage workflows.
• Provide IT services training and policy guidance for faculty, staff, and students.
• Manage Service Desk performance: KPIs, dashboards, and corrective actions to improve CSAT/MTTR/backlog.
• Represent the Service Desk in IT/ARL meetings and projects; ensure readiness for new services.
• Monitor outages/incidents; communicate updates per protocol; ensure timely notifications.
• Recruit, hire, onboard, and schedule student employees; deliver ARL training and coaching.
• Own student development: performance reviews, training modules, competency paths.

Skills

Team leadership

ITSM

Ticket management

Customer service

Troubleshooting

Knowledge base

Stakeholder communication

Metrics & KPIs

Automation scripting

DoD regulations

Security clearance

Education

Associate Degree

Tools

Jira Service Management (JSM)

Active Directory/Group Policy

SCCM/MECM

Red Hat Satellite

Ansible Automation Platform

PowerShell/Python

Job description

Penn State University—Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) in State College, PA, seeks an IT Technical Support Supervisor for our secure environments. You will lead a Tier 1 IT support team, govern incident workflows, and train staff, including student employees, to ensure high-quality service.

The role emphasizes DoD/NIST standards, security clearances, and strong coordination with IT and project teams. This is a fully on-site position in State College with comprehensive benefits.