Head of Infrastructure

Job Purpose

The Head of IT Infrastructure is accountable for the stability, resilience, security and performance of the organisation’s infrastructure and core technology platforms in a fast paced and highly regulated (FCA) environment. The role ensures high availability and uptime of business-critical systems, leads proactive operational management, and governs planned change delivery to minimise business disruption.

The Head of IT Infrastructure owns the infrastructure operating model, including incident/problem management, capacity planning, patching and vulnerability management, supplier management & performance, and technical governance, while providing clear executive-level reporting on operational health, risk posture, and service performance.

You will support the vision and strategy for service management in line with company strategy, ensuring processes are owned and maturing. You will lead the IT Infrastructure team, ensuring adequate resources and capacity. You will represent the IT functions at a senior level and will act as an escalation point for business stakeholders.

You will be responsible for the quality and technical approach taken by team members, ensuring it is in line with the company strategy, and that IT projects are delivered on time and budget.

Essential Technical skills and experience

• Experience in managing technical teams: infrastructure, and 3rd parties, to deliver a high standard and quality of work.

• Capability to configure and manage hybrid Azure estate including IaaS and PaaS solutions.

• In-depth knowledge and skills in configuring and managing VMware vSphere and experience with Hyper-V solutions (Dell Hardware)

• Strong Microsoft Office 365 administration skills, including hybrid Azure deployments.

• Extensive hands-on Microsoft Windows network skills including Microsoft AD, Group Policy management, security, DNS, DHCP, DFS, RDP and other Windows services.

• The ability to understand complex WAN and LAN topologies, MPLS, Ethernet extensions etc. Cisco/Meraki Switch, LAN/WAN/wireless configurations.

• Extensive experience managing Firewall configuration & network security solutions (FortiGate/FortiAnalyzer/FortiClientEMS/FortiToken)

• Backup & disaster recovery skills with experience of writing & managing Business Continuity plans (Veeam & Zerto replication/365 Backup) & Incident Response Plans

• Experienced in commonly used anti-virus software packages, particularly Sophos AV suite.

• Thorough understanding of data security principals and best practices, ideally experienced working in a regulated environment, managing commonly used tools such as web security gateways, automated vulnerability assessments, VPNs and endpoint protection (Netskope/Rapid7)

• Previously managed cyber security estates, overseeing external penetration assessments and vulnerability assessments, creating meaningful reports, and ensuring processes and controls are followed diligently.

• Experience in IP telephony and multi-channel contact centre administration.

• Proficient in Microsoft Windows server and desktop operating systems.

• Experience in maintaining active monitoring, vulnerability scanning and alerting (Artic Wolf/Site247/SLACK/Netwrix)