Secretary-IT (Hybrid Role): Executive Assistance for Tech TeamsThe Secretary-IT is a hybrid professional who combines traditional executive assistance with technical literacy to support technology teams, IT leaders, and cross-functional projects. This role has emerged as organisations increasingly rely on digital tools, distributed teams, and complex technical workflows. A Secretary-IT serves as a bridge between administrative efficiency and technical coordination, ensuring that operations run smoothly while enabling engineers, product managers, and IT staff to focus on core technical work.
Role overview and purpose
A Secretary-IT blends administrative responsibilities—calendar management, travel arrangements, document preparation, meeting coordination—with technical tasks such as basic system administration, ticket triage, and documentation of engineering processes. The purpose of the role is twofold:
- Ensure execs and teams have the logistical support they need to operate efficiently.
- Remove low-to-mid complexity technical friction from engineers’ workloads by handling routine IT tasks that don’t require deep engineering expertise.
This hybrid reduces delays, improves communication between technical and non-technical stakeholders, and increases overall team productivity.
Core responsibilities
Typical Secretary-IT duties fall into two broad categories: executive/administrative support and technical/operational support.
Administrative:
- Manage complex calendars for CTOs, IT directors, and engineering leads; prioritise and schedule meetings across time zones.
- Prepare agendas, meeting notes, follow-up tasks, and maintain action-item tracking.
- Coordinate travel, visas, and expense reports for technical staff attending conferences or client visits.
- Draft and edit internal communications, presentations, and reports.
- Maintain confidential HR and contractual documents; handle sensitive correspondence.
Technical / operational:
- Triage incoming IT requests and support tickets; prioritize and route to appropriate engineers.
- Maintain and update internal knowledge bases, runbooks, and onboarding materials for engineers and non-technical staff.
- Monitor basic system health dashboards and escalate incidents according to playbooks.
- Configure and manage collaboration tools (Slack, Confluence, JIRA, Microsoft Teams), including workspace administration, permissions, and integrations.
- Assist with provisioning accounts, managing licenses, and coordinating software deployments that do not require elevated access.
- Prepare technical meeting materials: compile logs, extract metrics, create summary reports for standups or incident reviews.
Required skills and competencies
A successful Secretary-IT typically demonstrates a blend of soft and technical skills:
Administrative and interpersonal:
- Strong organisational and time-management skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to translate technical jargon into plain language.
- Confidentiality and professionalism.
- Proactive problem-solving and stakeholder management.
Technical and operational:
- Familiarity with ITSM tools (e.g., ServiceNow, Zendesk) and issue-tracking systems (JIRA).
- Experience with common collaboration platforms (Confluence, Slack, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace).
- Basic understanding of networking, cloud concepts (AWS/GCP/Azure fundamentals), and system monitoring.
- Comfort with scripting or automation (e.g., basic Python, Bash, or familiarity with no-code automation like Zapier) is a plus.
- Ability to read logs, compile metrics, and create simple dashboards or visualizations.
Day-to-day workflow (example)
Morning:
- Review overnight alerts, triage tickets, and update the incident dashboard.
- Prepare the CTO’s day: confirm meetings, compile pre-read documents, and ensure action items from previous meetings are tracked.
Midday:
- Facilitate standups and ensure sprint notes are recorded in the team’s backlog.
- Process access requests and provision test accounts for QA or new hires.
Afternoon:
- Coordinate cross-team meetings, synthesize meeting outcomes, and distribute minutes and next steps.
- Update onboarding documentation and add new content to the knowledge base.
End of day:
- Escalate any unresolved incidents, send a daily operations summary to stakeholders, and prepare materials for the next day’s syncs.
How Secretary-IT differs from related roles
| Role | Focus | Key difference |
|---|---|---|
| Executive Assistant | Administrative support for senior leaders | Focused primarily on non-technical exec support (travel, personal calendar, communications) |
| IT Support / Helpdesk | Technical troubleshooting and user support | Handles technical incidents and deep troubleshooting; less emphasis on executive-level coordination |
| Technical Program Manager (TPM) | Project delivery and technical program coordination | TPMs lead cross-functional technical initiatives and own delivery; Secretary-IT supports operations and admin within tech teams |
| Office Manager | Facilities and general office operations | Office Managers focus on physical workplace and non-technical admin tasks |
When to hire a Secretary-IT
Consider creating this role when:
- The IT/engineering leadership spends excessive time on routine admin and onboarding rather than technical strategy.
- Cross-team coordination and documentation lag, causing repeated context-switching for engineers.
- The organisation uses many collaboration and ITSM tools that require ongoing administration.
- Teams are distributed across time zones and need reliable meeting coordination and follow-up.
Measuring impact
Key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate a Secretary-IT:
- Reduction in average context-switch frequency for engineers (measured via surveys or time-tracking).
- Mean time to triage low-complexity tickets before escalation.
- Time saved by executives on administrative tasks (hours/week).
- Onboarding time for new hires (days to reach productivity milestones).
- Stakeholder satisfaction scores and meeting punctuality/completion metrics.
Career path and growth
A Secretary-IT can progress into multiple tracks depending on their skills and interests:
- Move deeper into IT operations or site reliability roles with additional technical training.
- Transition to project or program management (TPM) with experience running technical initiatives.
- Advance into executive operations or chief of staff positions supporting technology leadership.
Hiring checklist and interview questions
Checklist:
- Proven experience supporting technical teams or IT leaders.
- Familiarity with collaboration and ITSM platforms used by the company.
- Examples of documentation or runbooks created.
- References showing discretion and stakeholder management.
Sample interview questions:
- Describe a time you triaged an IT incident and how you handled escalation.
- How do you prioritise competing calendar requests across multiple executives?
- Show an example of documentation you created for onboarding or an incident postmortem.
- Which automation tools have you used to reduce repetitive tasks?
Challenges and best practices
Challenges:
- Balancing administrative workload with technical responsibilities.
- Avoiding scope creep into engineering tasks that require developer time.
- Maintaining up-to-date technical knowledge as systems evolve.
Best practices:
- Define clear boundaries and an escalation matrix for technical issues.
- Maintain a living knowledge base and automate repetitive workflows where possible.
- Schedule regular syncs with engineering leads to align priorities and keep the role impactful.
The Secretary-IT role is a force multiplier for tech teams: it removes administrative and operational friction, improves documentation and coordination, and lets technical staff focus on engineering outcomes. When well-defined and staffed with the right mix of skills, a Secretary-IT increases productivity, reduces response times, and strengthens the link between technical and executive functions.
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