Section Head - IT (Emirati)

Role Purpose

The Section Head – IT will lead the reliable, secure, and cost-effective day-to-day operation of the organization’s IT infrastructure, systems, and services. The role is responsible for the “run and operate” layer, ensuring that platforms, applications, and environments delivered by AI & Data, Digital Transformation, and Research & Development remain stable, available, secure, and effectively supported in production.

The role does not own application development, digital product delivery, analytics, AI solutions, or R&D solution design. Application development falls under Digital Transformation. This position is specifically focused on operating, supporting, securing, and sustaining the organization’s technology estate.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline. A Master’s degree is preferred.
• 8–12 years of experience in IT operations, infrastructure, service management, or cloud operations, including several years in a leadership role. Experience within a government or large enterprise environment is highly desirable.
• Proven experience in operating secure and highly available infrastructure, production applications, service desk operations, vendors, and critical IT services.
• Relevant professional certifications are valued, including ITIL, PMP, cloud certifications across Azure, OCI, or AWS, and information security certifications such as CISSP or CISM.

Key Responsibilities

• Infrastructure & Systems: Manage on-premise and cloud infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), including servers, networks, storage, data centers, hosting, capacity, performance, and resilience.
• IT Service Management: Own the service desk and ITSM processes, including incident, problem, change, and request management, while ensuring SLA adherence and continuously improving the quality of end-user support.
• Availability & Business Continuity: Ensure business continuity and disaster recovery for critical systems, covering backup, redundancy, recovery readiness, and overall operational resilience.
• Security Operations: Manage day-to-day information security controls in accordance security standards, while coordinating with AI & Data and relevant governance functions on compliance requirements.
• Applications Support: Maintain and support business applications, including patching, upgrades, vendor coordination, and operational handover from development teams into production.
• Vendor & Asset Management: Manage IT vendors, contracts, SLAs, licensing, cloud cost governance, and the complete IT asset lifecycle to optimize cost, service quality, and operational performance.
• Governance & Reporting: Enforce IT operational policies, standards, and controls, and provide leadership with regular reporting on service health, risks, KPIs, costs, and technology improvement priorities.