The Role

Tala is looking for an experienced IT Support Engineer to support and execute our global IT strategy. Tala is a world leader in providing direct loans and financial services in emerging markets. We are a global team with diverse backgrounds who are singularly focused on using technology, data, and a customer-centric approach to meet the financial needs of the emerging global middle class.

In this role, you’ll be responsible for supporting an IT department with ultimate accountability for IT in Santa Monica as well as general coverage for offices in each market where we operate (Kenya, Philippines, Mexico, and India). You will be responsible for troubleshooting, resolution, and maintenance of all office IT, networking, and virtual environment infrastructures. You will be responsible for supporting the continual development of a global IT strategy (systems, staff, budgeting, etc.) and then executing on that strategy. Lastly, you’ll identify, report, and lead change management initiatives to drive maximum uptime, functionality, and resiliency of our network, hardware, and related software applications, with responsibility for identifying, reporting, and managing vendors to accomplish these goals. 

Great candidates will have deep experience supporting IT departments for a global technology company with offices worldwide, strong technical and vendor relations skills, and experience supporting large office expansion/infrastructure projects. You can and will roll up your sleeves to solve problems: you have a strong sense of accountability for end-user experience and systems uptime. You are a strong communicator, ensuring a large, varied audience understands issues, root cause, dependencies, and tradeoffs between different solutions alternatives. 

Responsibilities:

• Support and champion our Global IT strategy, with priority focus in Santa Monica along with Kenya, Philippines, India, and Mexico
• Support uptime, resiliency, redundancy requirements in Santa Monica
• Accountable for troubleshooting, technical support, diagnosis, and change management to maximize functionality and up-time of internal and third-party networks, hardware, software, applications, and other virtual environment infrastructures
• Support gap analysis of IT systems, staff, and vendors with recommendations and budget requirements to management
• Support evaluation, onboarding, and assess and report performance of IT vendors to management
• Recommend and lead change management activities in Santa Monica that minimize service disruption impacts on internal users, including planning and cost-effective execution of office capacity increases
• Ensure redundancy, resiliency, and identify dependencies for networking infrastructure and software applications
• Adhere to global IT budget in coordination with management
• Help implement and enforce Information Security policy 

Requirements:

• 2+ years experience supporting IT, infrastructure, and network support teams, preferrably for a global company with distributed offices & staff 
• Experience supporting an IT helpdesk strategy
• Experience evaluating and managing IT and network suppliers/vendors
• Experience adhering to budgets for an IT department 
• Experience supporting implementation of company-wide IT solutions improvements
• Willingness and ability to be available off-hours/on-call
• Willingness and ability to travel internationally 
• Experience with the following tools/systems: Hardware (Apple, Linux Desktop, Windows PC), MDM spec (Meraki Systems Manager/JAMF/AirWatch/etc…), routers/switches (Palo Alto, Cisco Meraki, D-Link Switch, TP-Link Switch), VoIP (SIP, Codecs - G711, G729, G723.1, QoS), Google G Suite (email, browser, productivity suite), development/task management. (SSH, Github, VPN, Jira/Confluence), communications (Google Hangouts, Slack, Zoom), Audio/Video (Shure wireless, Audio mixing, Live streaming production)

We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse team with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We focus on hiring talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

About Tala

Tala is a mission-driven mobile technology and data science company that’s opening up financial access for underserved people globally. Tala’s smartphone app uses alternative data to deliver instant credit and help customers build their financial identities. Unlike traditional credit scoring, Tala's proprietary underwriting models draw on thousands of mobile data points including network diversity, social connectedness, geographic patterns, and financial transactions to score customers in real time, without a need for formal credit history. Tala is headquartered in Santa Monica with additional offices in Nairobi and Manila.