Most growing companies hit a point around 75 employees where knowing when to hire IT manager becomes less of a planning question and more of a survival question. The ops lead, HR manager, or office coordinator who has been handling IT on the side simply cannot keep up. Devices are shipping late, tracking is inconsistent, offboarding retrieval is failing, and compliance audits are surfacing gaps. The 75-employee mark is the dedicated IT manager inflection point where this role goes from nice-to-have to operationally critical. Here are five signals it is time to hire.
At Rayda, we work with IT teams across 170+ countries managing exactly this transition. If your company is hitting these signals right now, talk to us or keep reading for the full breakdown of what to look for and what your first IT hire should do.
This article covers the five diagnostic signals, what the role should look like at a 75, 150 person company, a 90-day action plan, and a clear breakdown of what to keep in-house versus what to outsource.
Why Is 75 Employees the Inflection Point for Hiring an IT Manager?
The 75-employee mark is where IT complexity outpaces the capacity of a generalist. Below 50 employees, one ops-minded person can manage devices and access on the side. Above 100, the gaps become expensive, compliance-threatening, and visible to leadership. The 75-employee window is where companies have the most to gain from a dedicated IT hire and the most to lose from waiting.
There is a simple math problem underneath this. According to research from Firstbase, device logistics alone consume roughly 500 hours per year per 100 employees. That is not a side task. That is a full-time job.
At 50 employees, maybe your ops lead can absorb 250 of those hours. At 75, the math stops working. Add in MDM configuration, software license management, security patching, onboarding, offboarding, and the occasional data breach scramble, and you have a role that no longer fits inside someone else's job description.
The other pressure comes from compliance. NIST guidelines for cybersecurity frameworks recommend dedicated ownership of asset management, access controls, and incident response. At 75 employees, regulators, customers, and auditors start expecting your company to demonstrate that ownership. A shared responsibility across ops and HR does not satisfy that bar.
This is also the phase where most companies are starting to hire internationally. That means devices crossing borders, customs delays, local labor laws around equipment, and retrieval logistics that prepaid labels cannot solve. The dedicated IT manager inflection point and the international hiring inflection point often arrive at the same time, which makes the hire even more urgent.
If you are thinking about your first IT hire at a growing company, start here. The signals below will tell you whether you are already late.
What Are the Five Signals That You Need a Dedicated IT Hire?
The five signals that it is time to hire a dedicated IT manager are: new hire devices arriving late, no single source of truth for asset tracking, offboarding retrieval consistently failing, someone outside IT owning security decisions, and compliance audits exposing undocumented gaps. If three or more of these apply, you are past the inflection point.
Here is the full diagnostic table.
| Signal | What It Looks Like | Impact If Ignored | Urgency Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Devices arriving late to new hires | Laptops ship 2+ weeks after start date, new hires use personal devices | Poor onboarding experience, security risk, productivity loss | High |
| No single asset tracking source | Devices logged in spreadsheets, Notion, email threads, or not at all | Ghost assets, missing devices, failed audits | High |
| Offboarding retrieval failing | Departing employees keep laptops for weeks or permanently | Data exposure, hardware loss, unwiped devices in the wild | Critical |
| Security decisions made by non-IT staff | HR or ops approving software installs, no MDM policy | Compliance failures, breach exposure | Critical |
| Compliance audits surfacing gaps | SOC 2 or ISO 27001 prep reveals no documented IT processes | Failed audits, lost enterprise customers, legal exposure | High |
Signal 1: Devices are arriving late to new hires. If a new hire's laptop shows up three days after they start, or worse, they are waiting two weeks using their personal machine, that is a logistics and prioritization problem. It is embarrassing, it creates security gaps, and it tells you no one owns this process end-to-end.
Signal 2: No single source of truth for device tracking. Gartner research shows that up to 30% of IT assets are ghost assets, meaning they appear in records but are not where they are supposed to be. If your tracking lives in a spreadsheet no one fully trusts, you have a ghost asset problem. The post What Is "Zombie IT": The Untracked Devices Sitting in Your Ex-Employees' Homes covers exactly what happens when this compounds over time.
Signal 3: Offboarding retrieval is consistently failing. Capterra data shows that 71% of departing employees do not return equipment on time. Without a dedicated person owning retrieval, that number trends toward 100% at fast-growing companies. Unwiped devices sitting in ex-employee homes are a data breach waiting to happen. If IT is not part of your offboarding process yet, Why IT Should Be in Every HR Conversation About Onboarding and Offboarding explains why that needs to change.
Signal 4: Non-IT staff are making security decisions. If your HR manager is the one approving software installs or deciding who gets admin rights, your security posture is accidental rather than intentional. This is the signal most likely to show up in an audit and the hardest to explain to a customer.
Signal 5: Compliance audits are surfacing undocumented gaps. SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and similar frameworks require documented asset management, access controls, and incident response plans. If your last audit prep felt like archaeology, you need someone whose full-time job is maintaining that documentation.
What Should the IT Manager Role Look Like at a 75, 150 Person Company?
At a 75, 150 person company, the IT manager role is primarily operational rather than strategic. This person owns device procurement, deployment, tracking, retrieval, MDM configuration, software access management, and security compliance. They are a single point of accountability, not a full department. Budget roughly $95,000 per year in the US, based on Glassdoor's 2025 salary data for IT managers at this company size.
This is not a CTO or a VP of IT. That hire comes later. This is someone who can configure a MacBook in thirty minutes, set up Okta, write an acceptable use policy, and hold a vendor accountable for a late shipment. Those two things need to live in the same person.
Before you post the role, make sure the foundations exist for them to work from. IT Asset Management for Startups gives you a starting point for early-stage IT operations. Without a policy baseline, your first IT hire will spend their first month writing documentation that should have existed already.
The role typically owns four domains at this stage:
Device lifecycle. Procurement, configuration, deployment, tracking, retrieval, wipe, and redispose. Every device, every employee, every country.
Access management. Who has access to what, when they get it, and when it gets revoked. This becomes urgent fast as the company grows.
Security and compliance. MDM policy, patch management, endpoint security, and audit readiness. Not optional once you are selling to enterprise customers.
Vendor management. Contracts with hardware providers, SaaS tools, and any outsourced logistics partners.
The Forrester total cost of remote employee IT sits at roughly $4,200 per employee per year. At 100 employees, that is $420,000 annually. A dedicated IT manager who actively manages that spend typically pays for themselves in the first year through recovered assets, renegotiated contracts, and avoided compliance penalties alone.
What Should an IT Manager's First 90 Days Focus On?
An IT manager's first 90 days should follow a clear sequence: audit what exists, build the foundation, then optimize and automate. Trying to do all three at once produces nothing finished. The most common mistake is starting with tool selection before completing the asset audit, which means building on top of incomplete data.
If you are still working out when to hire IT manager for your team, this 90-day plan also doubles as a diagnostic. If no one at your company could execute this plan right now, that is your answer.
Here is the 90-day plan in detail.
| Week | Priority | Deliverable | Dependencies |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Asset audit | Complete inventory of all devices, locations, and assignment status | Access to procurement records, HR system |
| 3–4 | Policy documentation | Acceptable use policy, onboarding checklist, offboarding checklist | Legal review, HR input |
| 5–6 | MDM configuration | All active devices enrolled in MDM, encryption enforced | Device inventory complete |
| 7–8 | Access management audit | Offboarded employee access revoked, admin rights reviewed | HR offboarding records |
| 9–10 | Vendor and contract review | Hardware vendor contracts reviewed, logistics partner selected | Budget approval |
| 11–12 | Reporting baseline | Monthly IT metrics dashboard live, first audit-ready report produced | All above complete |
The asset audit in weeks one and two is non-negotiable. Most IT managers at this stage discover devices that no one knew existed and devices that should exist but are missing. If your tracking has been in spreadsheets, read Still Using Spreadsheets to Track Company Devices? Here's a Better Way before the first day.
The MDM configuration in weeks five and six is where most first IT hires underestimate the time required. Enrolling existing devices retroactively is harder than enrolling new ones from scratch. Tools like Jamf, Kandji, and Microsoft Intune are the right tools for this, but they require planning. The post When MDM-Only Tools (Jamf, Kandji, JumpCloud, Intune) Aren't Enough for Distributed Teams is worth reading before you configure anything.
By day 90, a good IT manager should have a defensible asset inventory, a functioning MDM setup, documented onboarding and offboarding checklists, and a vendor relationship for hardware logistics. That is the minimum viable IT function for a growing company.
How Does Hiring an IT Manager Change Your Device Management Approach?
Hiring a dedicated IT manager changes device management from reactive to systematic. Before the hire, devices get ordered when someone remembers to order them. After the hire, there is a procurement calendar, a deployment standard, a tracking system, and a retrieval process. The change is not just operational, it is financial. Unmanaged device spend is typically 40% higher than it needs to be.
The hidden IT procurement cost audit is a useful starting point for quantifying this. Most companies are shocked by what they find.
The device management approach also changes when you hire internationally. Shipping a laptop from a US warehouse to a new hire in Lagos, São Paulo, or Manila takes weeks and often fails customs. A dedicated IT manager who understands this problem will immediately look for local sourcing options in those markets. The post Hiring Your First Engineer in Lagos, São Paulo, or Manila? Read This Before You Ship a Laptop covers the specific failure modes to avoid.
This is also where Rayda becomes relevant. When your IT manager is focused on MDM, security, and compliance, they do not want to also be coordinating international shipments, chasing customs brokers, and managing retrieval logistics in 15 countries. Rayda handles the device logistics layer across 170+ countries, with deployment in 4, 8 days in most markets, so your IT manager can stay focused on higher-value work.
When Should You Outsource IT Functions vs. Hire In-House?
Device logistics, hardware procurement in emerging markets, and retrieval coordination can all be outsourced to a specialist platform. Security policy, access management, MDM configuration, and vendor strategy need to stay in-house because they require institutional knowledge and accountability that a third party cannot own. The boundary between the two is where your IT manager adds the most value.
Here is the full breakdown.
| IT Function | In-House | Outsource to Platform | Hybrid |
|---|---|---|---|
| MDM configuration and policy | Yes | No | No |
| Device procurement (domestic) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Device procurement (international) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment logistics | No | Yes | Yes |
| Asset tracking and reporting | Yes | No | Yes |
| Device retrieval (domestic) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Device retrieval (international) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Data wipe and redispose | No | Yes | Yes |
| Security policy and compliance | Yes | No | No |
| Access management | Yes | No | No |
| Vendor contract negotiation | Yes | No | No |
The most common mistake at the first IT hire stage is having the IT manager spend 60% of their time on logistics that a platform could handle for a fraction of the cost. According to CISA guidance on supply chain risk management, organizations benefit from separating policy ownership from operational execution. In practice, that means your IT manager sets the policy and standards, and a logistics partner executes them.
When the question of when to hire IT manager comes up in planning conversations, it is almost always paired with the question of whether to outsource. The honest answer is: do both. Hire the IT manager for strategy and accountability, and use a platform for the logistics execution they should not be doing themselves.
If your company is expanding internationally, the outsource case becomes even stronger. Laptops cost 25, 35% more in emerging markets when sourced from the wrong vendors, and retrieval from those markets requires local coordination that no prepaid label can solve.
FAQ
When should a growing company hire its first IT manager?
A growing company should hire its first dedicated IT manager around the 75-employee mark, or earlier if it is scaling internationally. The clearest signals are late device deliveries to new hires, no single asset tracking system, and offboarding retrieval consistently failing. Waiting until 100+ employees typically means the damage is already measurable in lost devices, compliance gaps, and new hire experience problems.
What does an IT manager do at a 75, 150 person remote company?
At this size, an IT manager owns the full device lifecycle (procurement, deployment, tracking, retrieval, wipe, redispose), MDM configuration, software access management, and compliance readiness. They are a single point of accountability across all IT functions. They also manage vendor relationships and build the documentation that compliance audits require. This is primarily an operational role, not a strategic one.
How much does it cost to hire a dedicated IT manager?
In the US, the average IT manager salary is roughly $95,000 per year, according to Glassdoor's 2025 data. Total compensation with benefits typically runs $110,000 to $130,000. The return is measurable: Forrester puts remote employee IT costs at $4,200 per employee per year. A dedicated IT manager who actively manages that spend across 100 employees typically recovers their own cost through asset recovery, vendor renegotiation, and avoided compliance penalties within the first year.
What should an IT manager focus on in their first 90 days?
The first 90 days should follow three phases: audit (weeks 1 through 4), build the foundation (weeks 5 through 8), and optimize (weeks 9 through 12). The audit phase covers a complete device inventory and policy documentation. The foundation phase covers MDM enrollment and access management. The optimization phase covers vendor consolidation, reporting dashboards, and audit readiness. Skipping the audit phase and going straight to tool selection is the most common and costly mistake.
Can a growing company outsource IT instead of hiring a dedicated IT manager?
Partially, but not entirely. Device logistics, hardware procurement in international markets, and retrieval coordination can be outsourced effectively. But security policy, access management, MDM configuration, and compliance documentation require in-house ownership. A platform can handle the physical device layer, but someone internal needs to own the policy and accountability layer. Most companies at the IT manager startup stage do both: hire for strategy, outsource for logistics.
What IT functions should stay in-house vs. be outsourced?
Security policy, MDM configuration, access management, and vendor strategy must stay in-house because they require institutional accountability. Device procurement in emerging markets, international deployment logistics, and device retrieval across borders can be outsourced to a specialist platform more cost-effectively than managing them internally. The rule of thumb: if it requires a policy decision, keep it in-house. If it requires a customs broker, outsource it.
This post is part of our complete guide to scaling IT operations from 50 to 500+ employees across borders. When you hire your first IT manager, Rayda becomes their device logistics layer, handling procurement, deployment, and retrieval across 170+ countries so they can focus on security, compliance, and systems architecture. Book a demo to see how Rayda supports your new IT hire from day one.
