UAE Advise

A well-known and well-reputed Company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates is looking for an experienced, skilled, competent, mature, qualified, creative, and intelligent candidate with significant knowledge and relevant working experience for the position of  “Infrastructure Operations Manager”.

Role Purpose:

The IT Infrastructure Operations Manager is responsible for managing the overall operations and support of information systems and ensuring the optimal usage of IT infrastructure resources and capabilities. She/he is responsible to develop, implement and maintain an IT operations framework that ensures secure, reliable and highly available information systems that can properly resist and recover from failures and/or disasters.

The IT Infrastructure Operations Manager is also responsible to deploy and maintain policies and processes based on industry-standard frameworks and best practice in order to ensure a minimum business impact in the event of IT service disruption or changes.

Role Details – Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

Strategic Support:

• Active involvement in IT financial management to control operational cost expenditures, costing of IT services, budget planning and tracking

• Develop and maintain an IT continuity plan based on risks analysis that will help reduce the impact of major systems disruption on key business functions and processes

• Identify opportunities for economies of scale; suggest cost benefits and better returns on investments

Operational Role:

• Manage the implementation and maintenance of technology solutions deployed in MAF data centers, shopping malls and mixed-use projects

• Review and assess continuously new technology solutions that can potentially benefit MAF business development, build business cases and cost benefit analysis to help business/IT management teams to take proper decisions accordingly

• Manage effective and optimal operations of all IT infrastructure services and provide appropriate management reports periodically

• Monitor and improve operational service levels by implementing daily, weekly and monthly measurements of problem and change management activities associated with core services provided by IT infrastructure team in compliance with predefined SLAs

• Manage escalations with respective technology and telecommunication vendors effectively to drive complex/unsolved problems to resolution; ensure timely communication and updates are sent to respective stakeholders

• Manage an effective IT infrastructure security operation that ensures the confidentiality, integrity and availability of corporate information and safeguards investments in IT systems

• Ensure periodical security assessments are performed and resulting recommendations are addressed timely and efficiently

• Manage projects and IT initiatives pertaining to IT infrastructure on time within budget and keep stakeholders updated on progress timelines, risks and cost

• Implement and maintain policies, processes and procedures, as well as associated training plans for the IT operations team human resources

• Ensure IT operations team compliance to policies, processes and procedures at all times

• Actively contribute to the costing of IT services and re-charging allocations to respective business units

• Ensure any internal or external audit observations related to IT infrastructure are addressed in a timely and accurate fashion

Datacenter Management:

• Maintain and optimize Datacenter operations (manage the physical environment and operation of DC equipment)

• Maintain Incident Management controls of Data Center

• Monitor and Maintain server room including the physical and environmental controls (Access & Temperature controls). This also includes maintenance of IT rooms in the branches and offices at different locations across Gulf.

• Coordinate with all stakeholders and management of projects related to data center

• Vendor coordination – OEMs and system integrators – on AMC renewals, new equipment purchases

Team Management Responsibilities:

• Accountable for the infrastructure budget

• IT Management, Projects, and Business Departments on the IT Infrastructure requirements of installed and planned IT equipment, covering network, security, IP telephones, servers, storage and all peripheral equipment.

• Reviews, with concerned parties, including Infrastructure Team, Vendors, IT Management, End Users, IT Infrastructure performance and quality of service.

• Manages the execution of infrastructure changes in compliance with given guidelines and procedures.

Definition of Success

To be successful in this position you will be an experienced Infrastructure Manager who has worked in large and complex technical environment with a multi-vendor complex element including responsibility for performance, service level and financial management.

• Solid experience in managing Data Centre, IT infrastructure and cloud technologies.
• Experience in developing strategies and in managing onshore and offshore technical resources.
• Experience with managing Cloud migrations
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills are a must.

Functional/Technical Competencies

Minimum Qualifications/Education

· Degree in a relevant subject or equivalent experience

Minimum Experience

• A minimum of 5 years experience of team leadership, management and/or mentoring staff in a management role.
• A minimum of 5 years’ experience in a hands-on infrastructure/operations role with extensive IT infrastructure management of Systems, infrastructure, applications, network and voice technologies, IT infrastructure security, data center Storage Area Networks (SAN) and enterprise back-up solutions.

• A minimum of 3 years’ experience managing IT Outsource vendors

• Experience with Microsoft Cloud platforms including O365 and Azure.

• Experience with Amazon Web Services

Personal Characteristics and Required Background:

• Proficiency in managing an operational support environment with critical systems;
• Experience in managing external providers;
• Problem-solving: solves complex problems and provides effective solutions;
• Customer focus: develops and implements service excellence concepts;
• Managing People: implements effective people management practices;
• Decision-making: assesses the impact of actions and decisions;
• Leading: demonstrates direction;
• Ability to work in a multinational and multicultural environment;
• High level of business acumen and experience in aligning infrastructure to business requirements to deliver competitive advantage.
• Will need to be able to develop and maintain a broad understanding of the end-to-end business processes to ensure that areas where IT can deliver efficiency and quality improvements and deliver competitive advantage are identified and exploited.
• Excellent communication