Job Description
Role Purpose
Own, operate and continuously improve the company’s core IT infrastructure, networks and end‑user services, ensuring they remain secure, stable and compliant within a regulated pharmaceutical environment.
This is a hands‑on technical leadership role where the manager leads by example in design, build, troubleshooting and optimisation while coaching a small team and coordinating specialist partners.
Key Responsibilities
1. Hands‑On Technical Delivery
• Administer and support servers, virtualisation platforms, storage, backups, networks, firewalls, Wi-Fi and cloud services (Azure, Microsoft 365).
• Perform advanced troubleshooting for incidents and problems, owning major incidents end-to-end.
• Implement patches, upgrades, hardening and configuration changes under ITIL and GxP change control.
• Maintain monitoring, alerting, observability and capacity planning.
• Ensure high availability and performance across on-prem and cloud environments.
2. Infrastructure & Team Leadership
• Lead and mentor infrastructure and support engineers; set technical direction and priorities.
• Foster ownership, documentation, standardisation and right‑first‑time delivery.
• Coordinate with the Service Desk for escalation and knowledge transfer.
• Champion automation, infrastructure as code and modern engineering practices.
3. Service Management, Projects & Continuous Improvement
• Own SLAs, KPIs and service outcomes for infrastructure and networks.
• Review performance data and drive improvements in resilience, reliability and user experience.
• Plan and deliver infrastructure projects (network refreshes, server replacements, cloud migrations, DR tests).
• Maintain documentation, runbooks, diagrams and configuration/asset records.
• Lead root‑cause analysis and continuous improvement activities.
4. Security, Compliance & Pharma Requirements
• Implement and maintain security controls: hardening, MFA, logging, SIEM, privileged access and patching.
• Ensure infrastructure changes comply with GxP, validation, MHRA, audit and data protection requirements.
• Own and regularly test backup and disaster recovery strategies.
• Maintain appropriate risk controls and documentation for regulated environments.
5. Vendor & Cost Management
• Manage day‑to‑day supplier relationships (MSPs, carriers, hardware/software vendors).
• Review supplier performance and escalate issues as needed.
• Support budgeting, forecasting and cost optimisation for infrastructure OPEX/CAPEX.
• Evaluate new technologies and tools to improve reliability, security or cost-efficiency.
Required Experience
• 5–8+ years in infrastructure/operations roles with current hands‑on capability.
• Strong experience with Windows Server, AD/Azure AD, M365, VMware/Hyper‑V, storage, backups and networking.
• Experience leading a small team or acting as an informal technical lead.
• Experience in regulated, manufacturing, healthcare or pharma environments is highly desirable.
• Familiarity with ITIL processes and structured documentation.
Skills & Attributes
• Deep technical expertise with willingness to remain hands‑on.
• Strong troubleshooting mindset; calm under pressure.
• Clear communicator able to translate technical issues for non‑technical stakeholders.
• Organised, documentation‑driven and improvement‑focused.
• Comfortable challenging legacy systems and driving modernisation.