As Director of Engineering (InfraOps), you will lead a central function of approximately 45 engineers responsible for Federated InfraOps, Core Infrastructure, Datastores, Service Desk operations, and near 24/7 incident support.
This is a leadership role, not a technical-authority role. You will be accountable for the organisational capability, service delivery, operating model, budget, and long-term effectiveness of the InfraOps function. Technical direction is provided through Principal Engineers and specialist technical leaders; your focus is ensuring the organisation, people, processes, governance, and commercial arrangements enable engineering teams to succeed.
You will be responsible for creating a predictable, well-governed, and trusted service organisation that supports a large and complex software estate while balancing cost, operational resilience, and service quality.
Function Leadership & Operating Model
Own the shape and operating model of the InfraOps function, its structure, roles, service offering and ways of working.Define and evolve the organisational structure across Federated InfraOps, Core Infrastructure, Datastores and Support.Establish clear service ownership, routing and escalation paths to remove ambiguity and single points of failure.Define service boundaries and accountabilities between InfraOps and product engineering teams.Set objectives, priorities, performance measures, and service expectations aligned to wider Engineering goals.Escalate ownership, funding and operational risks appropriately to Engineering leadership.People Leadership & Organisational Capability
You will lead a distributed organisation spanning the UK, US, India, and third-party partners.
Line management and development of InfraOps managers and team leaders.Workforce planning, succession planning, and organisational design.Recruitment, skills development, career frameworks, and talent growth across all levels.Building a collaborative, automation-focused culture across multiple geographies.Managing partner organisations and outsourced resources to ensure cost-effective, high-quality service delivery.Service Desk, Incident Management & Operational Support
You will ensure dependable support services for business-critical applications across the IRIS portfolio.
Own the governance of engineering service desk operations.Oversee access and licence management processes.Ensure sustainable on-call and incident response coverage with appropriate escalation paths and runbooks.Partner with Critical Incident Management teams to deliver effective technical responses during major incidents.Define and monitor service-level expectations, driving continuous operational improvement.Platform, Supplier & Tooling Management
You will have responsibility for engineering-wide platforms, tooling, and supplier relationships.
Key accountabilities include:
Commercial ownership of function-wide suppliers and engineering platforms.Leading supplier renewals, negotiations, licensing reviews and vendor governance.Driving consolidation toward strategic platforms including Azure, AWS, Jira and GitHub Enterprise.Cloud cost visibility, FinOps governance, forecasting and optimisation.Ensuring platform assets remain secure, compliant, patched and operationally effective.Governance, Compliance & Risk Management
You will establish and maintain a strong operational control environment.
Governance of change management, release enablement, access administration, disaster recovery testing and shared services.Supporting compliance and assurance initiatives including SOC 2, ISO 27001 and GDPR.Identifying operational, resilience, security and capacity risks and driving mitigation plans.Partnering with technical leadership to ensure platform standards and controls are adopted consistently.Budget & Commercial Ownership
You will own the financial management of the InfraOps function.
This includes:
Budget ownership across headcount, contractors, partners and tooling.Capacity modelling and investment planning.Providing transparency on costs, service delivery and resource allocation.Balancing operational demands against finite capacity and budget constraints.Building and defending business cases for investment in people, tooling and infrastructure.Impact: Your work will influence millions globally.Growth: Continuous learning and career development opportunities.Belonging: A culture that celebrates diversity and empowers every individual.Ready to Apply?
Click Apply - we’re excited to learn about your unique perspective and experience. If you need adjustments during the process, let us know. We’re committed to making this opportunity accessible to everyone.
What to expect from our hiring process
Our process is designed to be fair, transparent and straightforward. Stages vary depending on the role — more senior positions may involve additional steps, and some areas include role-specific assessments such as a technical test or case study — but typically you can expect:
Application review — we assess your experience and potentialInitial call — a short conversation to learn about you and share more about the roleSkills assessment — tailored to the position, e.g. case study, coding challenge or portfolio reviewFinal interview — meet the team and explore how you'll make an IMPACT at IRISWe'll always walk you through the specific stages at the start of the process so you can prepare with confidence.
If you need any adjustments or accommodations during the process, let us know, we’re committed to making this experience accessible for everyone.
