Head of IT Operations & Infrastructure

Chalhoub Group

UAE

Ref: GP285-1289

Job description / Role

Employment: Full Time

We are Chalhoub Group, a leading family business in the world of beauty, fashion and gifts. We have blended our Middle East expertise and intimate knowledge of luxury to offer service excellence to all our partners and a unique experience to all our customers for over 60 years

As we continue to grow, it's our vision to become a hybrid retailer, bringing luxury experiences to the fingertips of customers everywhere.

Our passionate teams drive our vision forward, without them, we couldn't create luxury experiences for our customers. Through opportunities, development and support, we empower each and every employee to achieve their career goals - and beyond. It's an exciting journey we're on, and one you could be part of.

Are you an agile senior leader with experience in driving IT Operations and Infrastructure with large organizations?

We are looking for experts from an IT Support Services background to drive our support services through best practice and passion! You will be responsible for providing strategic leadership to the Operations and Infrastructure teams (80+ headcount) by successfully managing the enterprise application and infrastructure environments, while ensuring alignment with corporate business objectives leading to high levels of customer satisfaction. As Head of IT Operations & Infrastructure, you will lead all IT operations components to ensure our IT systems are relevant, reliable, available, scalable and secure for the entire Chalhoub Group. The ideal candidate has a high degree of business insight with an ability to apply technical solutions to drive a competitive advantage. You will have knowledge of industry best practices in terms of Operations and Infrastructure. You will be responsible for developing and maintaining internal and external partnerships and driving team development, as well as for the implementation of standard ITIL processes (release, incident, problem, and change) and establishing and maintaining efficient procedures and processes.

What you'll be doing:

Application:

- Support and End User Services. Enterprise Wide Service Levels.

Infrastructure:

- Data Centre/Cloud services. Network services. Innovation.
- Collaborate extensively with the Business Community to capture their expectations and build a roadmap to increase their satisfaction through continuous improvement.
- Work closely with senior management across departments to identify, develop, implement and support value-add technology solutions for the organization
- Drive the roadmap to streamline, standardize, and strengthen performance, reliability, robustness and scalability across the company.
- Build relationships across multiple teams within the department (BRMs, PMs and BAs).
- Manage vendors and third-party relationships, including service levels, risk assessments, and compliance requirements.
- Manage the organization's disaster recovery program to ensure data integrity and technology functionality always remains intact.
- Maintain a stable and highly available technical infrastructure, while developing and establishing key metrics for performance and availability. Implementation of long-term strategic and short-term tactical plans that will enable business success within the function.
- Implements formalised governance and business rules/processes based on collaboration with the Enterprise Architecture teams.
- Establish appropriate levels of governance with respect to the operational performance metrics.
- This will include the development and management of KPIs and SLA metrics, supported by regularly scheduled reporting of performance for the following areas:

* IT Service Desk
* Infrastructure Services and Network Availability/Performance
* Application Services.

- Leads and provides direction to the Operational Teams. Selects, trains, develops, and motivates staff to meet or exceed performance expectations.
- Participates in budget development and monitoring in support of business initiatives. Interviews, hires, evaluates, manages, and develops staff to ensure accountability for achievement of departmental goals and objectives.
- Collaborates on deployment of ITSM functions by instituting and demonstrating industry best practices for release, change, configuration, and implementation, and incident/problem management.
- Leads through inspiration and innovation, turning ideas into reality, replicating the success throughout the team.
- Work closely with the PMO to ensure in flight projects and initiatives are clearly understood and a fluid framework exists for the transition of completed projects into Service Delivery.

Requirements

What you'll need to succeed:

- Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience
- Experience of a challenging entrepreneurial environment
- Minimum of ten (10) years IT experience
- Minimum of five years IT management experience
- The ability to cope with rapid change, in an organized way
- Highly-organized, self-motivated; leadership style of continuous improvement
- Strong leadership presence with high-motivation to meet personal, team and corporate goals
- The ability to manage many competing priorities.
- Strong communication skills at all levels of the organization / Demonstrated ability to provide excellent customer service
- The ability to manage expectations of senior leaders, report progress and describe initiatives succinctly and clearly.
- Determine the profile of risks in the estate and devise a strategy to mitigate.
- Experience of a broad range of technologies.
- The ability to develop & mentor members of the team.
- Problem & incident management expertise.
- Able to coordinate the activities of a diverse group of engineers, driving discovery, troubleshooting and resolution steps.
- Experience with people management (coaching, performance evaluation, career planning, project prioritization, escalation support during incidents, etc.)
- Detail oriented, process driven, innovative mindset and a deeply ingrained sense of ownership for the services delivered

Ready to join our exciting transformation to become a hybrid retailer, bringing luxury experiences to the fingertips of our customers everywhere? Now's your chance. By being part of our journey here at Chalhoub Group, you can make a real impact on customers and some of the finest brands in the world. In return, you'll have everything you need to innovate your career.

What we can offer you

We will help shape your journey with us through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers the opportunity to support careers that may span different teams, different job roles, different categories and even different countries. We offer diverse career paths for those who show drive and passion as well as the desire to learn and grow.

Amazing benefits

We recognise the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, life insurance, child education contribution & exclusive employee discounts.

About the Company

The Chalhoub Group is the leading partner for luxury across the Middle East since 1955. As an expert in retail, distribution and marketing services based in Dubai, the group has become a major player in the fashion, beauty and gift sectors regionally.

By blending its Middle East expertise and intimate knowledge of luxury, Chalhoub Group is building brands in the region, by offering service excellence to all its partners and a unique experience to its customers through its passionate teams.

With a growing workforce of more than 9,000 people, implemented in 14 countries, as well as the operating of over 470 retail outlets, the group's success is attributed to its most valued asset of highly skilled and dedicated teams. Professionalism and passion are what fuel the Chalhoub Group's competitive edge in today's market.

By being committed to implementing sustainable practices into their business, the Chalhoub Group has been awarded in 2013 the CSR Label from the Dubai Chamber of Commerce.

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Head Of IT salaries in UAE

Average monthly compensation
AED 6,500

Breakdown available for industries, cities and years of experience