Vice President Information Technology EMENA

To drive the strategic direction and operational excellence of our EMENA IT function, partnering with key business stakeholders to anticipate / scope IT projects and aligning regional continuous improvement initiatives and enterprise-grade infrastructure solutions with global business goals.

Infrastructure & Operations: lead infrastructure operations (servers, virtualisation, data centres, network architecture), Active Directory administration and cloud infrastructure (Azure, IaaS, PaaS, storage, identity management), ensuring high performance of components (routers, switches, UPSs, back-up) whilst monitoring infrastructure KPIs / SLAs, managing vendor relationships and championing ISO 20000 / 27001 standards.

Security & Compliance: work closely with the Information Security team to implement and maintain robust cybersecurity measures (firewalls, antivirus, intrusion detection systems), ensuring compliance with UK and EU data protection regulations, GxP, IT management frameworks and company policies / regulatory requirements.

Regional Strategy & Collaboration: support IT operations for our Sales, Manufacturing and Distribution across EMENA, aligning IT strategies and initiatives with global objectives by ensuring seamless integration of regional operations, collaborating with global delivery teams for ERP, CRM, SCM and helpdesk services and representing regional priorities in global IT forums to ensure successful rollout of business applications.

Leadership & Innovation: lead and mentor the regional IT team, fostering a culture of accountability, innovation and continuous improvement to drive digital transformation initiatives and infrastructure modernisation in partnership with the business.

Significant experience in a senior level IT management role, ideally with experience in regulated environments, exposure to enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, SCM) and their infrastructure dependencies.

Infrastructure Technologies: advanced knowledge of Active Directory, Windows / Linux server environments and enterprise networking protocols (SSL / IPSec, VLAN, VPN)

Virtualisation & Back-Up: Hands-on experience of VMware, Hyper-V, back-up systems (Veeam, Commvault) and disaster recovery planning.

Cloud Platforms: Microsoft Azure, AWS or GCP with experience in cloud migration, hybrid environments and cost optimisation.

Security Tools: tools including Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco, ASA, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, SIEM platforms such as Splunk or Microsoft Sentinel.

Monitoring & Automation: familiarity with tools like SolarWinds, Nagios, Zabbix, Ansible, Terraform and scripting for infrastructure automation (PowerShell, Python).

Experience implementing / maintaining infrastructure operations with relevant compliance standards (e.g. ISO 20000 / 27001, GxP, GDPR, IT risk management and financial governance policies) as audit ready.

Experience building high performing teams across multiple sites.

Excellent communication skills, with the ability to build strong working relationships at all levels of the business, navigate cultural difference and utilise influencing and persuasion techniques to get the best outcome.

Degree-level qualification in an IT-related discipline and associated IT certifications to support the above experience requirements.