Director, IT Operations

Job Description

location: Pune office (European working hours) The Role: We are looking for a dynamic, hands-on Director of IT Operations to lead our global infrastructure and support operations from our India hub. This role is critical to ensuring the stability, scalability, and security of Strategy s enterprise IT systems. You will shape and drive our infrastructure strategy, lead a talented international team, and partner with business and technology stakeholders across regions to deliver robust, secure, and cost-effective IT solutions. Your Focus: Lead a high-performing global team of engineers and subject matter experts across infrastructure, network, systems, and storage. Inspire, hire, mentor, and develop a diverse, world-class IT team. Drive strategic IT infrastructure initiatives and ensure alignment with business objectives and evolving technologies. Establish and track KPIs to measure team performance, system uptime, and customer satisfaction. Oversee operations for data centers, cloud environments, network infrastructure, storage, virtualization, backups, and disaster recovery. Ensure high availability, performance, and security of all corporate IT systems. Manage Active Directory, Microsoft 365, server management, and system patching (SCCM). Implement and maintain secure configurations for hardware, software, and network services. Define and enforce IT operational standards, documentation, runbooks, and SLAs. Plan and coordinate maintenance windows, change controls, upgrades, and incident response. Own asset lifecycle management, inventory controls, and procurement recommendations. Manage on-call rotations and ensure 24/7 global support readiness. Partner closely with internal application teams, Security, and Engineering to align infrastructure with evolving needs. Lead vendor relationship management, contract renewals, and performance reviews. Evaluate cloud provider services and ensure optimal utilization and cost efficiency. Ensure adherence to IT policies, regulatory standards, and internal controls. Support internal/external audits and compliance initiatives (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC2). Own infrastructure-related evidence collection and documentation for certifications. Core Attributes: Motivation. Passion. Integrity. Innovation. Collaboration. Customer Focus. Experience & Skills: Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field. 7+ years in IT infrastructure operations, including 5+ years in a management or leadership role. Experience running a 24/7 enterprise-grade infrastructure across multiple regions. Proven success in disaster recovery planning, testing, and execution. Project management expertise delivering complex cross-functional IT initiatives. Advanced knowledge of enterprise network architectures (Cisco, Aruba, Nexus). Strong experience with firewalls/VPNs (Palo Alto, Cisco, Juniper), and load balancers (F5, Citrix, Meraki). Deep hands-on experience managing cloud networking components across major hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP), including VPC/VNET peering, site-to-site VPNs, transit gateways, and Direct Connect/ExpressRoute configurations. Expertise in Microsoft technologies (AD, O365, SCCM), virtualization, and endpoint security. Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Ability to navigate complex global organizations and influence stakeholders at all levels. Strong analytical mindset with a bias for action and continuous improvement. Additional Information The recruitment process includes online assessments as a first step (English, logic, business) - we send them via e-mail, please check also your SPAM folder We work from the office in Pune.