About Guideline

Guideline is a global provider of ad intelligence and media plan management technology, powering the strategy, planning, and management of advertising buying and selling for the world's leading enterprises. Our solutions deliver the industry's most comprehensive and timely insights, enabling publishers, agencies, brands, investors, and consulting firms to optimize media performance and drive superior business outcomes.

Guideline's proprietary spend and pricing data represents approximately $200 billion in annual media investment across 65 countries, providing the most complete and transparent view of the global advertising marketplace available today. In 2026 we are accelerating our investment in analytics and AI-powered solutions for the advertising and capital markets industries.

About the role

We're hiring a Director of IT to run that foundation. This is explicitly a player/coach role. You'll set direction and develop a small team, and you'll also be in the admin console, closing tickets, writing the script, and rebuilding the onboarding flow yourself. If you're looking to manage exclusively through others, this isn't the right fit. If you want real ownership and the autonomy to fix things directly, it is.

Expect roughly 75% hands-on execution and 25% management.

What you'll do — hands-on

Identity and access management

• Administer the identity provider (Entra ID) — app integrations, SAML/SCIM configuration, lifecycle rules, and authentication policies
• Enforce MFA across all applications; manage phishing-resistant factor rollout and exception handling
• Build and maintain role-based access groups so provisioning is driven by role, not by ticket
• Run privileged access management — admin account inventory, break-glass procedures, and just-in-time elevation where supported
• Execute quarterly user access reviews: pull the reports, chase the reviewers, document the removals

Endpoint and device management

• Own the MDM platform (Intune) across the macOS and Windows fleet
• Maintain configuration baselines: disk encryption, screen lock, firewall, OS patch enforcement, and automatic update policies
• Manage EDR deployment and coverage verification; investigate and resolve endpoint alerts
• Run device procurement, imaging, shipping, asset tagging, inventory reconciliation, and return logistics
• Handle lost or stolen device response — remote lock, wipe, and documentation

Employee lifecycle

• Onboarding: accounts, hardware, group membership, and app access provisioned and verified before day one
• Role changes and transfers: add new access, and actually remove the old access
• Offboarding: same-day deprovisioning across every system, session revocation, device recovery, and a signed-off checklist that stands up as audit evidence
• Maintain the provisioning runbook per role so it's repeatable and not dependent on one person's memory

Internal helpdesk and support operations

• Utilize ticketing system (Jira Service Management) — queues, SLAs, categories, and routing
• Personally handle escalations and complex issues; this role stays in the queue
• Build and maintain the internal knowledge base and self-service documentation
• Report on ticket volume, resolution time, and recurring root causes — then eliminate the recurring requests
• Run new-hire IT orientation and periodic tooling training

SaaS and vendor administration

• Maintain the authoritative SaaS application inventory with owner, data classification, and renewal date
• Administer core business applications; serve as escalation admin for tools owned by other departments
• License optimization — reclaim inactive seats, right-size tiers, consolidate overlapping tools
• Manage the renewal calendar and support contract negotiation with Finance and Legal
• Detect and remediate shadow IT through IdP and expense review

Corporate network, infrastructure, and continuity

• Manage office networking, VPN or zero-trust access, and DNS
• Administer email security — SPF/DKIM/DMARC, filtering, and phishing response
• Own backup configuration and verification for corporate systems, including restore testing
• Maintain IT disaster recovery and business continuity runbooks and participate in annual testing

AI, automation and improvement

AI is at the core of Guideline. We are AI forward with a growth mindset and look to safely automate as many processes as possible.

• Automate repetitive work — provisioning, deprovisioning, evidence collection, reporting
• Build integrations between the IdP, MDM, HRIS, and ticketing system to reduce manual handoffs
• Continuously replace ad hoc processes with documented, automated ones
• Create, maintain and otherwise ideate on AI agents across the business

SOC 2 — your scope

You own the IT control domain within the audit — the policies, the operation of those controls, and the evidence that proves they ran.

You are responsible for:

• Maintaining IT-specific policies: access control, acceptable use, asset management, password/authentication, endpoint security, and IT change management — reviewed and updated on the annual cycle
• Operating the IT controls those policies describe, consistently and on schedule
• Collecting and organizing evidence for IT controls: access review artifacts, onboarding and offboarding records, device compliance reports, patch and vulnerability status, backup and restore test results, and change approval records
• Keeping evidence audit-ready continuously rather than assembling it during fieldwork
• Responding to auditor requests and program-owner requests for IT control documentation, on time and complete
• Remediating IT-scoped audit findings and tracking them to closure
• Keeping the IT control set current in the compliance platform (Scrut) and resolving failing checks
• Flagging control gaps and risks to the program owner rather than absorbing them quietly

You are not responsible for: overall program strategy, scoping the audit, selecting the auditor, non-IT control domains, or serving as the primary auditor relationship owner.

What you'll do — as a coach

• Lead and develop a small IT team, set standards, priorities, and growth paths
• Hire as the function scales; define what good looks like for the team
• Manage IT budget, vendor relationships, and renewals
• Partner with Engineering on the boundary between corporate IT and production infrastructure
• Support Sales and Legal on the IT portions of customer security questionnaires
• Report IT health, risk, and compliance status to the SVP of Customer Operations

What we're looking for

Required

• 7+ years in IT, including 2+ years leading a team or function while remaining hands-on
• Deep, current administration experience with a modern IdP, MDM, and SaaS stack — you can do the work, not just direct it
• Demonstrated ownership of IT controls in a SOC 2 environment: running access reviews, producing evidence, responding to auditors
• Strong endpoint security, IAM, and lifecycle management fundamentals
• Scripting ability for automating provisioning and evidence collection
• Comfort operating without a large team — you build the process, then scale it
• Clear communicator across engineers, executives, and auditors

Preferred

• B2B SaaS experience through a growth stage
• Compliance automation platform administration (Vanta, Scrut, Secureframe)
• Exposure to SOC, ISO 27001, GDPR, FedRAMP or CCPA
• Cloud IAM familiarity (AWS/GCP/Azure)
• Certifications: CISSP, CISM, CISA, or equivalent

Why this role matters here

IT sits inside Customer Operations for a reason. Our systems, our access controls, and our audit evidence are things customers ask about before they sign. Your customers are also your coworkers and enabling their success is at the heart your role. This role isn't insulated from business — it's part of how we earn and keep trust.

Real data. Real outcomes. Zero guesswork.