IT Technical Operations Manager (No code / Low-Code)

Role
This is a management seat first, a systems seat second, and a simplification seat above all.

You will install real management over the Tech team, ship the stuck deliverables that have been slipping, simplify systems that have grown too complex, and run the function lean as the company scales. You manage a Tech Lead and dashboards, Help Desk, and automation specialists from day one.

You are not here to do the building yourself. You direct the team, own the workflow design, review what they ship, and make sure every department that depends on this infrastructure gets what it needs - fast, reliably, and without the founders involved.

What You Will Own

• The team - responsiveness, Help Desk SLA, and a culture where problems are surfaced early instead of going quiet. Messages answered within the shift. This is the primary job.
• All D&I systems - dashboards, the Airtable backbone, automations, the client portal and upload pipeline, account security, and the Help Desk
• Workflow design and simplification - when a process breaks, re-architect it simpler. Build-vs-buy asked before any significant build. You direct, the team builds.
• Breaking the single-person dependency - route requests through the Help Desk, push self-service, document everything so the function scales beyond one head
• Shipping Client Portal V2 - the marquee deliverable, repeatedly slipped, still not live. Get it into production and make it reliable at scale.
• Weekly reporting without being asked - Help Desk resolution time, system uptime, portal status, and weekly priority completion

Non-Negotiables

• Has managed a technical team before - this is the primary reason for the hire
• Leads through the team, does not do the building personally
• Simplifier's instinct - removes complexity, buys before building bespoke
• Surfaces problems early and holds the team to the same standard

What You Bring
Experience (non-negotiable)

• Has managed a technical team - walks in on day one and holds ICs to a standard, including a strong senior IC, without becoming their peer
• Strong workflow design and systems thinking - maps a process, spots where it breaks, designs the simplest architecture that makes it reliable
• Defaults to removing complexity and buying off-the-shelf before building bespoke

Skills (must-have)

• Genuine hands-on Airtable, Make, and n8n experience - has built in both, not just used them
• Can read and review code to judge and direct what the team ships - not a full-stack engineer, but technically literate enough to hold the team to a standard
• Supabase familiarity
• Daily AI tools usage - Claude or equivalent - hard requirement
• Account and data security literacy - access control, credential hygiene, environment separation
• Make and Notion Automations,

Who You Are (non-negotiable)

• Self-starter who runs their lane without micromanagement once trained
• Creates safety to escalate - gets a nervous team to surface bad news early rather than go quiet
• Motivated by mission and outcomes, not title and stability

Logistics
Location: Remote. Philippines or South Africa.
Hours: Full-time. Must overlap with the team's Asia/Manila working hours — 9:00 AM Manila cadence.