Information Technology Specialist

About the Company:

Our client, established in 1986 as a joint venture between two industry giants, specializes in state-of-the-art liquid filtration for machinery globally. This team has been named a Top 10 American Manufacturing Plant as well as awarded one of the top places to work in the state of Illinois!

About the Role:

The IT Specialist works within the global IT Team to provide first line service and support across endpoints, applications, and systems supporting plant operations; they also participate in a variety of cross-functional team projects. They’re responsible for the ongoing ‘care and feeding’ of the global network and associated services including switches, firewalls, wireless services and network security.

Responsibilities:

• Provide end user computer, application, and network support, escalating advanced issues to senior IT staff and/or to vendors as appropriate.
• Maintain overall ownership of the global network infrastructure, ensuring consistency in design, security, redundancy and high levels of uptime.
• Assist in the user lifecycle management process, creating and managing employee logins and associated access to systems.
• Assist in endpoint lifecycle management from procurement through deployment, management, and disposal.
• Participate in Change Management, Incident Management and Disaster Recovery activities as required.
• Help define and meet SLA requirements for support issues.
• Continually look to improve and refine the network services provided globally.
• Maintain a knowledgebase of emerging technologies and their applicability.
• Contribute technical skills, industry experience and best practices to the rest of the team, helping to drive impactful change.
• Work independently when necessary and exercise reasonable judgment, while providing clear documentation of activities and accomplishments.
• Coordinate with Europe staff to organize and collaborate on assigned projects.

Qualifications & Required Skills:

• Bachelor’s Degree (B.S) or equivalent in Information Technology, or related field; 3-4 years of progressive IT experience in similar support roles. Experience working in multi country/international technology deployments preferred.
• Experience managing all facets of a corporate network including edge switching, VLANs, routing protocols, wireless APs, firewalls, internet connectivity and service redundancy/failover.
• Strong network support and troubleshooting skills, including IP services, ethernet/fiber, wireless, VPN & Firewalls and IP telephony.
• Strong MS Office and general application troubleshooting and support skills.
• Experience in Microsoft Cloud technologies including Entra, Office 365 and Intune.
• Proven ability to logically work through issues and to quickly learn new skills and technologies.
• Capable of understanding and applying industry best practices.
• Preference will be given to candidates with experience supporting ERP solutions such as JD Edwards E1 or SAP.

Preferred Skills:

• Excellent customer service skills with a strong focus on meeting customer needs.
• Exceptional time management and multitasking skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Easily adaptable to changes in processes, procedures, and priorities.
• Collaborative, team-oriented with strong organizational and documentation skills.
• Accessible by phone and email on a reasonable, as-needed basis outside of set work hours to support critical business and plant needs, in the US and EU locations.
• Able to work in a safe manner, following all safety policies and procedures while keeping in mind other people’s safety as well.
• Report any accidents and potentially unsafe conditions or unsafe acts immediately to the appropriate supervisor.