Head of IT Operations

Job Overview

The Head of IT Operations is responsible for ensuring dependable, secure, and cost-efficient management of the organisation's IT infrastructure and network. This role provides strategic leadership and oversight across IT infrastructure operations, network operations, and IT service management, guaranteeing the availability, resilience, and optimal performance of critical systems while delivering high-quality end-user support in accordance with agreed service standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Formulate and lead the IT operations strategy and roadmaps for infrastructure, network, and service management, integrating with overall IT and enterprise goals.
• Collaborate with senior IT leadership to govern and prioritize resource allocation across infrastructure, network, and service operations.
• Administer the annual OPEX and CAPEX budgets for IT infrastructure, network, and service operations, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and applying cost control, including showback and chargeback models when appropriate.
• Oversee strategic vendor, telecom, data centre, cloud, and managed-service partner relationships through sourcing strategy development.
• Stay updated on emerging infrastructure, network, and service management technologies to guide adoption and integration.
• Advocate for innovative, cost-effective, and shared IT solutions across the enterprise.
• Provide strategic direction for the full lifecycle management of IT infrastructure—covering architecture, engineering, and operations—monitoring data centres, cloud platforms, compute, storage, and databases to ensure health, capacity, availability, and performance.
• Ensure infrastructure services have strong capacity management, availability, resilience, backup, and disaster recovery plans.
• Drive the specification and deployment of automation tools for managing server and infrastructure lifecycles at scale.
• Manage local site and end-user computing standards and support across facilities.
• Direct operations and support of enterprise networks—including LAN, WAN, SD-WAN, wireless, and connectivity—ensuring security, resilience, and high availability.
• Monitor network performance and capacity; oversee timely resolution of network incidents and problems.
• Promote automation and controlled change management for network operations.
• Align network operations with security, compliance, and governance mandates in partnership with cybersecurity.
• Provide oversight of IT service support and full IT service management lifecycle based on ITIL best practices, including incident, request, problem, change, configuration, and service level management.
• Manage the service desk and end-user support teams to deliver professional and prompt service, achieving service level targets.
• Define and govern the service catalogue, SLAs, and OLAs, with transparent reporting on service performance.
• Engage in customer troubleshooting and incident root-cause analysis, advancing major incident and problem management effectiveness.
• Analyze operational metrics to identify trends and drive continuous service improvements and process enhancements.

Qualifications and Experience

• Over 10 years of progressive experience in technology management, focusing on IT infrastructure, network, and service operations.
• At least 5 years of proven leadership in large, cross-functional teams, effectively influencing senior management and stakeholders in complex environments.
• Track record of leading IT organisations managing critical infrastructure, network, and service operations.
• Experience managing extensive data centre and network environments supporting 24x7 or high-availability production systems.
• Demonstrated capability managing both frontline and management teams.
• Adaptability to fast-changing and ambiguous contexts, with a readiness to lead transformative IT initiatives.
• Relevant certifications such as ITIL, and infrastructure, cloud, or network credentials, are advantageous.

Knowledge and Skills

• Exceptional leadership with the ability to articulate and inspire through a clear vision aligned with IT and business strategies.
• Deep expertise in data centre, cloud, compute, storage, database, and enterprise network technologies and large-scale operation.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL-based IT service management practices and tools.
• Proven success in leveraging automation and modern operational methods to enhance reliability and efficiency.
• Excellent analytical, strategic, conceptual development, and execution skills driven by operational metrics.
• Business acumen coupled with industry and domain insight to demonstrate IT operations' value to the enterprise.
• Expert financial management experience, including budgeting and cost recovery models.
• Effective negotiation and influencing skills within matrixed and resource-shared environments.
• Strong vendor and partner management capabilities.
• Proven talent management and organizational leadership to ensure right role placement, engagement, and workforce satisfaction.
• Capacity to lead change and balance operational stability with continuous improvement.