Senior IT Manager

Neara; Menlo Park, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Aether Biomachines is seeking an experienced IT generalist to be the first dedicated IT hire, supporting a ~40 person team across two Bay Area sites. This hands-on role covers laptops, networks, and strategic IT decisions, with ownership over systems and processes.

You'll own onboarding/offboarding, vendor coordination, and the rollout of SSO, endpoint security, data backups, and cross-site integrations, while aligning with budgets and governance.

Qualifications

• 7+ years IT experience, startup exposure preferred.
• Ability to be the sole IT contact across two sites.
• Experience selecting and deploying key IT tools and security posture.
• Understanding practical networking fundamentals (LAN/WAN/WiFi).
• Ability to plan and execute IT projects with vendor coordination and budgeting.

Responsibilities

• Provide help desk support across hardware, software, and accounts.
• Establish and maintain a network SLA for lab instruments.
• Onboard/offboard employees: accounts, hardware, asset lifecycle management.
• Coordinate with external vendors/contractors on specialized projects.
• Deploy and manage IT systems: SSO, endpoint security, backups, data workflows.

Skills

IT operations

SSO/IdP

AD/SAMBA

Endpoint management

Networking basics

Vendor coordination

Tools

MDM

AD/SAMBA

SSO

LAN/DNS

Windows/macOS/Linux

Job description

About the role

Aether is bringing IT in-house. You'll be the first dedicated IT hire supporting our ~40 person team across two Bay Area sites. This role will solve existing problems and develop the systems that enable ongoing success and efficiency. This is a hands‑on, generalist role for someone who wants ownership and variety. You'll be the person people go to when their laptop stops working, when a lab instrument can’t find the network, but also to provide strategic decisions about services and systems such as device management, security posture, business‑process automation and integrations.

What you'll own

• Help desk support across both sites: hardware, software, and account issues.
• Establish and maintain a network SLA, including our lab instruments.
• Employee IT onboarding and offboarding: accounts, hardware, and IT asset life-cycle management.
• Coordinate with external vendors/contractors on specialized projects (you'll manage the relationship, not necessarily do the work yourself).
• Select, deploy and manage business IT systems such as SSO, endpoint security, network/WiFi administration and reliability, data custody/backups, and employee adoption and training for good practices.

What we're looking for

• 7+ years of IT experience, ideally including time at a startup (under ~100 people) where you touched a wide range of systems rather than one narrow specialty. We're more interested in range and adaptability than years.
• Comfortable with the versatility, prioritization, and interpersonal skills required to be the only IT person on the team (for now).
• Excellent judgement in selecting, deploying, configuring and managing key IT tools like MDM, IdP, SSO, AD/SAMBA, RBAC/authorization, LAN/DNS, and mixed-fleet support (Windows, macOS, some Linux) at the right scale for our team and growth.
• Understanding of practical networking fundamentals: LANs, WANs, VLANs, addressing/subnets, and WiFi.
• Comfort planning and executing IT projects including vendor and contractor coordination, budgeting & approvals, team buy‑in and training. It is not just executing tickets.

Bonus skills and experience

• Exposure to AWS or cloud infrastructure support.
• Exposure to DevOps practices (e.g., version control, SBOM, CI).
• Familiarity with business process automation (BPA), coupled with the good sense to only use it when it adds value.
• Familiarity with how IT needs change during company audits, certifications, and litigation holds.
• Experience with laboratory automation and/or electronic lab notebooks.
• Ability to identify, deploy and implement value‑add software tools and integrations for a mixed‑specialty growing team.

Success in the first 6 months

These are the concrete outcomes we'd expect early on. You'll drive the decisions and the implementation; on the data pipeline item specifically, you're expected to investigate and recommend, not necessarily build it yourself.

• Evaluate our current endpoint management setup and make a call: expand what's in place or migrate to a proper MDM platform, then start rolling it out.
• Start consolidating identity management toward single sign‑on, so employees aren't juggling separate logins per machine or system.
• We're currently running both Active Directory and Google Workspace. Investigate whether we can consolidate onto one and bring back a recommendation.
• Move new‑machine setup to scripted, repeatable installs for faster provisioning, and less time spent on manual updates.
• Investigate our instrument data flow for R&D (test data > pilot batch > QA) and current notebook practices (digital and physical), and bring back a recommendation on how to improve traceability and search. You'll partner with whoever ultimately builds this, not necessarily build it solo.
• Propose a LAN/WiFi uptime SLA target and stand up continuous monitoring across both sites (uptime, jitter, device presence) to diagnose recurring connectivity issues — including in the materials lab.
• Audit backup processes for instrument computers and servers, confirm they actually work, and set up a preventive maintenance schedule.

What this role is not

• Not a compliance/security‑program‑ownership role (e.g., SOC 2). That's out of scope for now and would be contracted separately if it comes up.
• Not a data engineering role. You're expected to scope and recommend on the instrument data pipeline, not build and maintain it end‑to‑end.
• Not a management role. No direct reports currently.

Note:

Aether Biomachines is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply.

The pay range for this role is $130,000 - $170,000 per year + equity, with final compensation based on skills and experience. Employment at Aether is at‑will, and reasonable accommodations are available upon request. Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. At this time, Aether is not sponsoring visas for this position.