Chief Technology Officer

Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services • Brandon, MS, US • $101.66k - $150k / year • 1d ago

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

for the Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services (ITS)

The Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services (ITS) is seeking an experienced professional to serve asChief Technology Officer (CTO). Reporting to the ITS Executive Director, this position is one of the four most senior leaders who comprise the C-suite for the agency and is responsible for leading enterprise technology operations for the State of Mississippi through ITS. The successful candidate will coach, delegate, and develop a highly technical team while effectively communicating with agency partners, boards, and other stakeholders using both technical and nontechnical terminology appropriate to the audience. This role is central to modernizing and securing the State of Mississippi’s technology infrastructure and shared services that support agencies and citizens across the State.

The CTO leads the operational execution of the State’s technology initiatives, ensuring high-quality service delivery and alignment with statewide business and policy priorities. The CTO has direct oversight for the operational divisions of the agency, including:

Data Services (application development, LAN/WAN development and management, mainframe and database development and management, and public and private cloud services)
Telecommunications Services (enterprise cybersecurity operations, statewide voice network services, statewide data network management and support, and 24/7/365 support of the State Data Center)

The CTO is responsible for ensuring that technology operations are reliable, secure, cost-effective, and aligned with the State’s strategic direction.

Key Responsibilities:

Make key decisions on enterprise-level technology investments in alignment with statewide business, policy, and security priorities.
Design and customize the technical architecture to support the introduction and adoption of new technologies in sync with the established enterprise strategy and roadmap.
Assess the potential risk of bringing new and emerging technologies into ITS and Mississippi state government and establish plans to mitigate operational, cybersecurity, compliance, and financial risks.
Modernize statewide infrastructure, including hybrid multicloud environments and software-defined or programmable infrastructure, to improve scalability, resiliency, and performance.
Establish and communicate clear technical and operational requirements for acquiring technology applications, services, systems, and equipment, and negotiate and manage vendor contracts to meet cost, safety, performance, and service level expectations.
Ensure that internal and external systems are running and performing as they should by actively monitoring operations, responding to incidents and outages, and managing changes that might affect highly available and efficient systems.
Engage in major decisions and procurement of technology centered around technology modernization, optimization and consolidation, and major statewide or enterprise IT systems and services.
Partner with cybersecurity leadership to ensure secure, resilient technology operations that comply with statewide security policies, standards, and best practices.
Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of technical and operational leaders across data services, cloud, cybersecurity, networking, and data center operations.
Foster a culture of customer service, accountability, and continuous improvement in how ITS delivers technology services to state agencies.
Engage regularly with agency executives, boards, and legislative stakeholders to communicate technology strategies, risks, and investment needs in clear, nontechnical language when appropriate.
Oversee adherence to service management practices, including incident, problem, change, and capacity management, to ensure reliable delivery of enterprise services and achievement of service-level commitments.

Minimum Qualifications:

A bachelor's degree or higher in business, information technology/information systems, computer science, engineering, or a related field.
Ten to twelve+ years of progressive IT experience across multiple functions, including significant IT leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated experience leading large-scale enterprise IT operations, preferably in a public sector or similarly complex, regulated environment.
Experience with data center operations, cloud migrations, and hybrid or multicloud environments.

Preferred Skills:

Solid understanding of data analysis, budgeting, and business operations, including the development and management of complex IT budgets and cost models.
Superior analytical and problem-solving capabilities, with the ability to evaluate complex tradeoffs across cost, risk, time, and quality.
Strong strategic and business mindset, with demonstrated experience translating business and policy goals into technology strategies and roadmaps.
Excellent organizational and leadership skills, including the ability to lead and develop multi-disciplinary technical teams.
Outstanding communication and interpersonal abilities, including the ability to present complex technical issues and investment needs to executive leadership, boards, and legislative stakeholders.
Familiarity with ITIL-based service management practices, DevOps approaches, and modern application architectures.
Experience working with major cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) and enterprise network architectures.
Relevant professional certifications (e.g., ITIL, PMP, major cloud provider certifications) are preferred but not required.

Benefits: