IT Operations Manager (Contract)

Government technology has failed the public for decades, and Americans have been conditioned to expect websites from the 90s for essential public services.

Kaizen exists to strengthen trust in American public services by building technology that residents and public servants are proud to use. We partner with local, state, and federal agencies to replace legacy systems with modern, AI-native software that is worthy of the people they serve. We started in outdoor recreation, and now we're building toward something much larger — the software layer that powers how Americans access any government service.

Our platform reaches 55 million Americans across 50+ agencies. Our goal: build technology that touches the lives of 100 million residents by the end of the year.

Founded in 2022 and based in New York City, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital. We're builders, designers, and operators who believe that beautifully designed software shouldn't be a luxury in government. It's how you earn trust back.

THE ROLE

Kaizen builds software for federal and local government. We are roughly ~40 people on a cloud-first, mostly macOS stack, and we sell into customers who impose real requirements on how we run our own corporate systems.

IT here is currently distributed across engineers and operators who all have other full-time jobs. It works, in the sense that people can log in. Selling into government means holding a higher bar on identity, devices and access than a side-of-desk model can sustain, so we are building the layer properly. This engagement does that and leaves behind something that runs without you.

Hands-on build work: deploying tools, writing policy, and cleaning up account sprawl rather than advising on it.

WHAT YOU'D OWN

Identity. We are partway through consolidating everything behind a single identity provider and the tail is where the value is: the applications nobody wanted to touch, the provisioning that stil...