IT Operations Lead

About Mercor

Mercor is at the intersection of labor markets and AI research. We partner with leading AI labs and enterprises to provide the human intelligence essential to AI development.

Our vast talent network trains frontier AI models in the same way teachers teach students: by sharing knowledge, experience, and context that can't be captured in code alone. Today, more than 30,000 experts in our network collectively earn over $2 million a day.

Mercor is creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You’ll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society.

Mercor is a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our new San Francisco headquarters.

About The Role

We're hiring an IT Operations Lead to own the reliability, security, and scalability of our identity, endpoint, and IT infrastructure systems. You'll partner directly with the Head of IT to transform reactive support into strategic, automated systems that prevent problems before they occur — balancing speed, security, and an exceptional user experience for technical teams building the future of AI.

You'll be based in our San Francisco office, collaborating closely with Security, Engineering, and People Ops.

In This Role, You Will

Handle day-to-day operations and incident response

• Triage and resolve Tier 2/3 tickets with a focus on automation and improving response and resolution times
• Manage and troubleshoot Apple devices at hyper-scale
• Trace root causes across complex, multi-system failures (Rippling → Okta → Kandji → Google Workspace), identify patterns in recurring tickets, and propose automation or self-service solutions

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• Analyze downstream impacts before making changes; map dependencies and blast radius for SSO, MDM, and access-control changes
• Build and maintain runbooks, troubleshooting guides, and knowledge base articles that elevate team capabilities
• Lead small projects that address operational pain points (BYOD policies, international provisioning, compliance evidence collection)
• Translate technical issues for non-technical stakeholders (People Ops, Finance, Legal) during incidents and changes
• Mentor future IT team members on troubleshooting methodology and systems thinking
• Participate in an on-call rotation and help establish sustainable escalation procedures as the team grows
  
  

You May Be a Good Fit If You

• 5–7 years in IT Operations or Technical Support roles, ideally supporting technical teams (SaaS, cloud, AI/ML environments)
• Systems thinker who naturally traces dependencies, considers second-order effects, and asks "why did this break?" not just "how do I fix it?"
• Strong incident management skills: triage, root-cause analysis, blameless postmortems, pattern recognition

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• Understanding of compliance controls (access management, logging, change management)
• Clear communicator who can explain technical issues to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders and write excellent documentation
• Self-directed with a bias to action and strong judgment on when to escalate versus resolve independently
• Solves problems others gave up on through creative, systematic troubleshooting
• Thinks through second- and third-order effects before making changes
• Documents solutions that help everyone, not just yourself
• Builds trust through technical competence and calm, clear communication under pressure
  
  

Strong Candidates May Also Have Experience With

• Expert troubleshooting across the Apple ecosystem, including MDM (Kandji, Jamf, Intune)
• Advanced Google Workspace and Okta administration (SAML/OIDC, lifecycle automation, SCIM provisioning)

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• Multi-cloud Support (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Network troubleshooting (DNS, VPNs, VLANs)
• Scripting and automation (Python, Bash) and APIs for repetitive tasks and integrations, plus low-code automation tools (Okta Workflows, Zapier)
  
  

What Makes This Role Unique

You'll spend most of your day handling tickets and incidents — but you won't just fix problems, you'll ask why they exist and work to prevent them. If you see the same issue three times, you'll write the runbook, propose the automation, or flag the upstream fix. As we scale, you'll hire and mentor the next IT Operations team members, shaping how we support a fast-growing AI company.

Benefits

• Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
• A $20K relocation bonus (if moving to the Bay Area)
• A $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)
• A $1K monthly stipend for meals
• Free Equinox membership
• Health insurance
  
  

Compensation Range: $100K - $200K