Assistant Director (Infrastructure & Cloud Operations), IT

About the Role The Assistant Director (Infrastructure & Cloud Operations) will join a lean two-person Infrastructure team as a senior individual contributor operating within a vendor managed environment. The role balances governance and vendor coordination with direct technical execution when required, supporting day-to-day infrastructure operations while ensuring stability, resilience, and operational discipline across hybrid environments. As the organisation transitions towards a cloud-first architecture, the role brings strong hands-on infrastructure and cloud expertise to support both ongoing operations and modernisation initiatives. Within the small team, responsibilities for operations, escalation and coverage are shared and closely coordinated, with clear individual ownership across assigned domains to ensure continuity, effective decision making and sustainable workload distribution. Key Responsibilities 1. Infrastructure Operations & Service Management Support day‑to‑day infrastructure operations across hybrid environments (on‑premises and cloud), covering network, compute, storage, backup, and end‑user platforms. In a lean team, perform configuration changes, first‑cut troubleshooting, deployment activities, patching oversight, backup and restore validation, environment health checks, and technical validation of vendor deliverables. Establish and maintain operational KPIs, dashboards, and management reporting; drive service improvement through standardisation, automation, and process optimisation. Act as the technical escalation point for incident, problem, and change management, with a focus on reducing recurring issues and operational risk. 2. Cloud Migration & Operations Serve as the cloud subject matter expert within the infrastructure team; operationalise cloud foundations, including landing zone configurations, network and identity integration (e.g. Entra ID), monitoring, backup and disaster recovery arrangements, as well as cost governance controls. Contribute to migration activities (e.g. discovery, cutover and hypercare support) and ensure operational stability following transition to cloud environments. Operate and support AWS/Azure services (e.g., IAM/Entra ID integration, VPC/VNet, compute, storage, load balancing, security groups/NSG, logging/metrics), coordinating closely with vendors/MSPs. Identify optimisation opportunities (right sizing, scheduling, storage tiering) and implement or direct remediation to improve resilience, performance and cost efficiency. 3. User Computing (EUC), Endpoint & License Management Oversee the day-to-day management of end-user computing services delivered primarily through endpoint support vendors, including provisioning, lifecycle refresh, patching, encryption and compliance monitoring, to ensure service reliability and policy adherence. Maintain accurate asset and software license inventory, ensuring compliance with organisational requirements and prudent cost management. Coordinate with endpoint support vendors to monitor service performance and implement agreed improvements to enhance user experience and operational consistency. 4. Governance, Risk & Compliance (in partnership with Cybersecurity) Ensure Infrastructure operations comply with internal ICT policies, cybersecurity directives, and audit requirements (e.g., access reviews, change controls, configuration baselines, asset/license records). Maintain accurate documentation for architecture, configurations, SOPs and standards, support audit exercises and remediation tracking for infrastructure findings. Partner with the Assistant Director (Cybersecurity) on security requirements (e.g., hardening baselines, vulnerability remediation, identity governance) while maintaining Infrastructure ownership of operational execution. 5. Strategic Support & Architecture Enablement Assist in Infrastructure design discussions and vendor proposals to ensure solutions are scalable, secure and maintainable. Support medium‑term planning for modernisation, refresh and resilience uplift, aligned to organisational needs and cloud‑first direction. Assist in translating enterprise requirements into practical infrastructure designs and operational procedures in collaboration with vendors. 6. Procurement, Budgeting &Vendor Management Assist and contribute technical inputs to procurement (specifications, evaluation rubrics, clarifications), contract administration and payment processing in accordance with policy. Monitor vendo…