IT Support Lead
Posted
Summary
Onsite IT support lead at Backyard Products' Monroe, MI manufacturing campus, acting as the hands-on site IT resource for office and plant-floor technology — Windows/M365 endpoints, barcode printers, scanners, time clocks, and Meraki networking — while owning the helpdesk queue, its service standards, and the platform itself.
About the Role
Monroe is where Backyard Products designs and builds. Our headquarters offices and our manufacturing operation share one campus, and this role is its hands-on technology resource. You will support everything from the corporate desktop to the plant floor: operator terminals and the PCs connected to production equipment, label and barcode printing, scanners, time clocks, and the site network itself: Meraki firewalls, switching, and the wireless that covers an active manufacturing environment, alongside the office teams who run the business.
This role also carries something we are excited to invest in: ownership of how our helpdesk runs. You will manage the central ticket queue as a well-run system, with daily triage, timely acknowledgment and updates for every requester, and a short weekly report on queue health, trends, and recurring issues. Over time, you will help the whole operation get better, building the knowledge base and documentation that make support repeatable and improving the helpdesk platform itself.
A note on the title: this is a working lead role rather than a management position. The "lead" means you own the helpdesk system and its standards, while the hands-on work stays with you. It is a great fit for someone who genuinely enjoys solving problems personally, values the independence to manage their own day, and takes satisfaction in leaving things better documented than they found them. You will have clear priorities, a supportive VP of Technology, and real trust to run your site well.
What You Will Do
- Manufacturing floor: Support the technology connected to production: operator workstations and controller-side PCs, label and barcode printers, scanners, shop-floor terminals, time clocks, and plant wireless, with appropriate urgency when a line or shipping area is waiting.
- Manufacturing floor: Partner with equipment vendors on the machine side of integrated systems, handling the IT side directly and documenting the boundary so issues route correctly the first time.
- Office: Provide deskside and remote support for headquarters staff: workstation builds and imaging, new-hire setups, Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, OneDrive), printers, conference rooms, and mobile devices, with patience and professionalism for colleagues under deadline pressure.
- Helpdesk operations: Manage the central helpdesk queue to our service standards: daily triage, acknowledgment within 4 business hours, customer-visible updates at least every 2 business days, and communicated closures, along with a weekly operations report on queue health and recurring issues. These standards apply across our IT team.
- Helpdesk platform: Administer and improve the helpdesk platform itself: workflows, automation rules, SLA policies, categories, forms, and reporting, so the system keeps getting better as the work gets done.
- Administration: Handle user accounts, permissions, and password/MFA support across Microsoft Entra ID, M365, and Exchange Online; manage devices through Intune with Autopilot provisioning; support our endpoint security software; and complete same-day onboarding and offboarding checklists.
- Network & security: Support the site network and security stack: Meraki firewalls, switches, and wireless access points, along with DNS and layer-7 content filtering through Cisco Umbrella. Handle day-to-day changes, monitoring, and troubleshooting, and document findings when deeper issues call for escalation.
- Systems & process: Build and maintain our SOP and knowledge-base library, manage asset inventory, coordinate with our managed service provider through established procedures, and support device readiness for our Dynamics 365 rollout.
Who Thrives in This Role
We care more about how you work than where you learned. People who enjoy this role tend to:
- Love hands-on problem solving, working through logs, settings, hardware, and documentation to resolve issues personally, including the tougher break/fix problems beyond first-tier scripts, and knowing when an issue genuinely calls for a vendor or an escalation.
- Bring structure to support work: triaging daily, keeping requesters informed, measuring the work, and addressing the recurring cause rather than the same symptom again.
- Ask good questions before acting (what changed, who is affected, what is the safest path), then move forward with confidence and own the outcome.
- Communicate naturally and proactively, so colleagues always know where things stand.
- Enjoy modern tools, including scripting, automation, and AI, to find answers and work efficiently, paired with sound technical judgment.
- Stay calm and effective in a busy production environment where the fix matters right now.
What We Are Looking For
- 3+ years of hands-on IT support, ideally including time as the primary or sole IT resource for a site, shift, or user group.
- Good experience with a helpdesk/ITSM platform such as Freshservice, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Jira Service Management, including administering and configuring it (workflows, automation rules, SLA policies, categories, reporting), not only working tickets in one.
- Experience running or improving a ticketing operation, such as a queue you managed, a backlog you brought under control, metrics you reported, or a knowledge base you built.
- Windows desktop/laptop support with genuine Tier 2 depth in diagnosis and break/fix, along with working knowledge of M365 administration including Entra ID and Exchange Online, Intune with Autopilot (or comparable device management), and endpoint security tools.
- Practical network troubleshooting across firewalls, switching, wireless, VPN, DNS, and networked printers. Our environment runs Cisco Meraki with DNS and layer-7 filtering through Cisco Umbrella, so hands-on experience with either is a strong plus, and solid fundamentals on comparable platforms translate well.
- A natural inclination toward initiative: we love hearing about problems candidates identified and solved on their own, and our interview conversations explore examples like these.
- Manufacturing, industrial, warehouse, or shipping-floor support experience is a significant plus (shop-floor terminals, label/barcode printing, scanners, equipment-adjacent PCs); so are Dynamics 365 exposure and A+/Network+/Microsoft certifications.
Position Details
- Onsite 5 days per week at our Monroe, MI campus. We are hiring locally for this role; it is not remote or hybrid, and relocation assistance is not available.
- Ability to lift up to 60 lbs (PCs, monitors, printers, label stock) and comfort working in both an active manufacturing environment, following site safety practices, and a corporate office.
- Occasional schedule flexibility around production and shipping needs.