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Snapshot: What a CIS (IT) Manager Actually Does

Computer & Information Systems (CIS) Managers, also called IT Managers, IT Directors, Heads of IT, or CIO/CTO (depending on scope), own the planning, delivery, security, and support of the technology that runs a business. They translate strategy into roadmaps, budgets, architectures, and teams; keep networks, cloud, apps, and data secure and available; and lead programs like ERP/CRM rollouts, cloud migrations, identity & access, and analytics modernization. Great CIS managers blend systems thinking, people leadership, risk management, and financial discipline, and they communicate clearly with both engineers and executives.

It’s not a purely hands-on engineering job, and not a PowerPoint-only role either. Expect a mix of vendor negotiations, architecture decisions, security posture reviews, incident response, and coaching engineers, all while hitting budgets and service-level targets.

Core Responsibilities (What You’ll Actually Do)

1) Strategy & Portfolio Management

• Build a three-year IT strategy & roadmap aligned to business outcomes (revenue, margin, customer experience, compliance).
• Run a project portfolio: intake, prioritization, business cases (NPV/IRR), sequencing, resource and vendor plans.
• Define architecture standards (cloud, data, integration, identity) and technical guardrails.

2) Service Delivery & Operations

• Own infrastructure & platforms: cloud (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS), on-prem compute/storage, networks, collaboration suites, endpoint management, identity, and observability.
• Lead IT service management (ITSM): incident, problem, change, and configuration (CMDB); define SLAs/OLAs; measure MTTR and availability.
• Manage disaster recovery (RPO/RTO targets), backup, and business continuity exercises.

3) Security, Risk & Compliance

• Partner with Security/CISO to manage identity & access, patching, vulnerability management, endpoint protection, logging/monitoring/SIEM, data loss prevention, zero-trust initiatives.
• Ensure compliance with SOC 2/ISO 27001, HIPAA/PCI/GDPR/CCPA or sectoral rules; run access reviews and vendor risk.
• Lead incident response tabletop exercises; own corrective & preventive actions (CAPA).

4) Applications, Data & Integration

• Govern ERP/CRM/HRIS/Finance systems; standardize SDLC (Agile/DevOps) and release management.
• Oversee data platforms (warehouses/lakes, integration, MDM, governance, BI).
• Champion automation (RPA, iPaaS), API management, and product-centric ways of working.

5) People & Vendor Leadership

• Build a high-performing team: hire, coach, set expectations, career paths, and performance rituals.
• Manage vendors & MSPs: RFPs/RFIs, SOWs, SLAs, penalties/earn-backs, renewals, and cost optimization.
• Lead change: training, communication plans, stakeholder management, and adoption metrics.

6) Financials & Governance

• Own Opex/Capex budgets; track unit costs (per user/app/workload) and show ROI.
• Run risk & architecture councils; maintain policy and standards; report KPIs to the exec team/board.

“Would I Like This Work?”

You’ll likely love it if you:

• Enjoy solving complex puzzles with people, balancing tech trade-offs, budgets, and stakeholder needs.
• Get energy from building teams and systems rather than being the smartest coder in the room.
• Like measurable outcomes: uptime, MTTR, cost per user, project ROI, security posture.

You may struggle if you:

• Prefer deep individual contributor (IC) coding over leading others.
• Dislike budgets, vendor negotiations, or policy/compliance work.
• Avoid tough prioritization calls and escalations.

Skill Stack That Wins

Technical Architecture & Operations

• Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) landing zones, IAM roles/policies, networking, container orchestration (Kubernetes), serverless patterns.
• Enterprise platforms: Microsoft 365/Google Workspace, Okta/AAD, ServiceNow/Jira, major ERPs/CRMs (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Dynamics, Salesforce).
• Observability: logging, metrics, tracing; SRE concepts (SLOs/SLIs, error budgets).
• Data: modern lakehouse/warehouse, ETL/ELT, data quality/governance, BI (Power BI/Tableau/Looker).

Security & Compliance

• Zero trust, privileged access, patch/vuln management, email security, DLP, encryption and key management.
• Control frameworks (NIST CSF, ISO 27001), audit readiness, third-party risk, privacy basics.

Leadership & Communication

• Portfolio/program management (Agile, SAFe, PRINCE2/PMP), storytelling with metrics, negotiation, conflict resolution.
• Change management (ADKAR or similar), training/adoption design, stakeholder mapping.

Financial & Commercial

• Cloud FinOps, license optimization, vendor negotiation, TCO/ROI modeling, chargebacks/showbacks.

Tools & Platforms (Typical Stack)

• Cloud & Infra: AWS/Azure/GCP, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, Cloudflare/Akamai.
• Identity & Security: Okta/AAD, Duo, CrowdStrike/SentinelOne, Tenable/Qualys, Splunk/Datadog/Sentinel.
• ITSM & Work Mgmt: ServiceNow, Jira/Confluence, Freshservice.
• Collaboration/Endpoints: Microsoft 365/Intune, Google Workspace/Chrome, Jamf, Zoom/Teams.
• Data & Integration: Snowflake/BigQuery/Redshift, dbt, Fivetran, Airflow, MuleSoft/Boomi/Workato, Power BI/Tableau.
• Finance/HR Apps: SAP/Oracle/Workday/NetSuite, Salesforce/Dynamics.

You don’t need to be a world-class expert in each, but you must know enough to ask great questions, set standards, and hold teams/vendors accountable.

Typical Entry Requirements

• Education: Bachelor’s in Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or Business with strong tech experience. Master’s/MBA helpful for director+ roles.
• Experience: 5–10+ years across systems engineering, networking/cloud, apps, data, or security; 2–5+ years leading teams or programs.
• Certifications (nice-to-have): PMP®/PgMP®, ITIL 4, AWS/Azure Architect, CCSP/CISSP, CISM, SAFe/CSM, FinOps Practitioner.
• Soft Traits: Calm under pressure, pragmatic, transparent, excellent listener, bias to document and automate.

Salary & Earnings Potential (U.S. orientation; varies by metro/industry)

• IT Manager / Infrastructure or Applications Manager: $120k–$165k (10–15% bonus)
• IT Manager / Head of IT (single site or business unit): $145k–$190k (bonus 10–20%)
• IT Director / Sr. Director: $175k–$240k+ (bonus/equity)
• VP IT / Head of Technology / Small-company CIO: $220k–$320k+ total comp
• Enterprise CIO/CTO (mid-large public): $300k–$700k+ total comp (equity meaningful)

Pay levers: industry (finance/biotech/tech > nonprofit/public), scale/complexity (multi-region, 24×7), security/regulatory intensity, track record (on-time programs, cost-downs without outages), and P&L adjacency.

Growth Stages & Promotional Paths

• Team Lead / Supervisor (0–2 years in leadership)
  • Leads help desk/endpoint/network/app squad; owns SLAs and on-call.
  • Win: MTTR down, CSAT up, clean change records.
• IT Manager (2–5 years)
  • Owns a domain (infrastructure/cloud, apps, data). Builds roadmaps and budgets.
  • Win: Successful platform upgrade or migration; measurable cost/availability gains.
• Senior Manager / Head of IT (4–8 years)
  • Cross-domain leadership; runs portfolio; partners with Security and Finance.
  • Win: ERP/CRM or cloud migration on time/budget; audit with no majors.
• Director / Sr. Director (7–12 years)
  • Multi-year strategy; vendor ecosystem; talent pipeline; presents to ELT/board.
  • Win: Unit-cost transparency; zero critical incidents year-over-year; strong engagement scores.
• VP / CIO / CTO (10–15+ years)
  • Enterprise strategy; digital transformation; M&A integration; innovation bets.
  • Win: Business outcomes: revenue enablement, margin lift via automation, risk reduction with quantified ROI.

Lateral routes: Product/Platform Management, Security (CISO track), Data/Analytics (CDAO), Enterprise Architecture, DevOps/SRE leadership, or Consulting.

Day-in-the-Life (Realistic Rhythm)

Morning

• Review overnight alerts/incidents, cloud cost dashboard, and top risks.
• 15-min stand-up with managers: priorities, dependencies, blockers.

Midday

• Architecture review for a new integration; approve guardrails and SLOs.
• Vendor negotiation on license renewal; evaluate build vs. buy for an analytics feature.
• Security sync: patch/vuln status, IAM exceptions, tabletop drill prep.

Afternoon

• Meet a business leader about a new capability (e.g., CPQ or data mart); agree on outcomes, budget, and timeline.
• Skip-level 1:1 with engineers; coach on career paths and tech debt priorities.
• Update KPI dashboard for the exec meeting; finalize change calendar.

Always: Expect a curveball, cloud bill spike, phishing campaign, API degradation, or a priority shift from the CEO. Your job is to triage calmly, communicate early, and correct course.

KPIs You’ll Be Measured On

• Service Health: Availability %, SLO attainment, MTTR/MTBF, change failure rate, incident volume per 1k users.
• Security & Risk: Patch/vuln SLAs, MFA/PAM coverage, phishing failure rate, audit findings closed on time.
• Delivery & Adoption: % projects on time/on budget, feature adoption/utilization, cycle time/lead time, user NPS/CSAT.
• Financials: Cloud & license unit costs, variance vs. plan, savings from optimizations, value realized vs. business case.
• People: Engagement scores, regrettable attrition, hiring time-to-fill, skills growth/certifications.

Example Resume Bullets (Quant & Concrete)

• “Led hybrid-cloud migration; infra cost/unit ↓ 23%, availability ↑ 2.1 pts, MTTR ↓ 38%.”
• “Implemented zero-trust (MFA, conditional access, PAM); phishing failure ↓ 72%; audit 0 major findings.”
• “Delivered global ERP in 11 months (–2 months vs. plan); close cycle ↓ 3 days; inventory accuracy +4 pts.”
• “Built FinOps program; right-sized instances/licenses; $4.2M annual savings without performance impact.”
• “Launched ServiceNow; change failure ↓ 41%, CSAT +18 pts, end-user tickets ↓ 22% via automation.”

Interview Prep – Questions You’ll Get (and Should Ask)

Expect to answer

• “Walk us through your three-year IT roadmap: how did you prioritize and fund it?”
• “Tell me about a major incident, what failed, how you handled comms, and what changed.”
• “How do you measure value for IT projects beyond ‘on time/on budget’?”
• “Build vs. buy: give an example and the decision criteria.”
• “How do you partner with Security without slowing the business?”

Ask them

• “What are the top three business outcomes IT must enable this year?”
• “Current stack and pain points (cloud costs, ERP, data quality, identity, end-user experience)?”
• “How are IT budgets set, top-down % of revenue or zero-based by portfolio?”
• “What’s the change/adoption philosophy, training, champions, comms cadence?”
• “How is success recognized, career path, bonus metrics, exec sponsorship?”

30/60/90-Day Onboarding Plan (Bring This to Your Interview)

• Days 1–30:
  • Inventory systems, contracts, SLAs, and risks; meet business leaders; baseline KPIs (availability, MTTR, cloud cost/unit, ticket volumes).
  • Quick wins: patch backlog burn-down, MFA enforcement gaps, top 10 noisy alerts, a license cleanup.
• Days 31–60:
  • Publish a one-page IT strategy with 3–5 outcomes; stand up a change calendar and incident comms playbook.
  • Launch FinOps or license optimization sprint; pilot an automation (e.g., self-service joiner/mover/leaver).
• Days 61–90:
  • Present a 12–24 month roadmap with business cases; finalize a talent plan (roles, partners, training).
  • Run a DR test tabletop; close top audit findings; agree on quarterly KPI reviews with ELT.

Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)

• Tech first, outcomes later: Start with business outcomes; let architecture follow.
• Shadow IT wars: Offer secure, supported patterns (API/iPaaS, approved SaaS) instead of blanket “no.”
• Under-investing in identity & observability: These pay for themselves in fewer incidents and faster MTTR.
• Cloud cost surprises: Stand up FinOps early; tag everything; set budgets/alerts; optimize licenses.
• One-and-done go-lives: Plan for adoption, training, champions, in-app guidance, feedback loops.

Is This Career Path Right for You? (My MAPP Fit)

CIS leadership rewards integrators—people who love enabling others with well-designed systems, clear processes, and a culture of reliability. If your natural motivations lean toward organizing complexity, coaching teams, making tough trade-offs, and delivering measurable outcomes, you’ll likely thrive.

Is this career path right for you? Find out Free.
Take the top career assessment, the MAPP Career Assessment, to see how your motivations align with this role: www.assessment.com

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