Information Technology Infrastructure Manager at Virgin Active South Africa

To plan, direct and design the Virgin Active IT infrastructure while simultaneously managing the IT teams responsible for maintaining that infrastructure. Delivering excellent staff, member and supplier outcomes through good stakeholder, service and conflict management.

Minimum Requirements...

We’re looking for… 

• 10 years in managing IT infrastructure and networks

• The finest ambassador of Virgin Active at all times.

• A tenacious manager with a persuasive non-conflictive style

• Demonstrable experience in Service Management, ideally in a retail environment with multiple 3rd parties

• Excellent understanding and experience of using an ITSM tool and its capabilities as a service management platform

• Experience of managing customer/ stakeholder relationships

• Someone who uses evidence for decision making but shows great instinct

• Comfortable with the occasional chaos that comes with working with a highly ambitious and challenging company

• Operationally aware – understands the end to end process for delivering high value projects

• Continually looks for ways to improve the quality of our services and the efficiency of the company.

• A challenger of the norm with a desire to make a real difference in the work they do

We can’t live without…

• Good understanding of IT Infrastructure and IT project frameworks

• Commercially astute with an understanding of the business context of IT

• Adept in high pressure situations

• A good appreciation of the key functions of IT Service Delivery:

  • The ability to use best practice to drive improvements

  • Forward planning

  • To balance conflicting demands and financial constraints

  • Prioritise according to business needs

• Well-developed interpersonal skills and ability to work collaboratively within a team

• Effective verbal and written communication skills:

  • Articulate scenarios which cause infrastructure failures both written and verbally

  • Explain solution architecture ideas

• Ability to perform under pressure and to delivering against competing priorities

• Self-motivated without the need for direct supervision, passionate, positive, and hard-working

• Highly flexible and able to adapt to ever changing environments

• Patience, tolerance and resilience

• Ability to identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies

• Effective documentation skills

• A track record of successfully supporting enterprise applications.

• Experience of managing 3rd parties to deliver on contractual obligations.

• Ambition to be part of something special

We’d love you to have…

• Experience of working in a tool-based environment

• Experience of procurement and supplier selection processes

• Experience and understanding of any of the following; Digital Multi Channel, Membership Systems, CRM, Business Intelligence, Mobile Apps, Software testing

• Have experience in HCI and Cloud technologies.

• Industry experience with high touch customer service organisations

• An interest in health and fitness

Your Duties & Responsibilities…

• To always do your bit towards achieving our Vision of being The World’s Most Loved Exercise Brand; to live and role-model our Values of Insatiable Curiosity, Delightfully Surprising, Heartfelt Service, Red Hot, Smart Disruption and Straight Up; and to bring to life our People Promise of Be Yourself and Go Together, Work Hard and Dream Big

• Meet IT Service objectives by identifying issues and associated risks that impact end user experience and implementing solutions that provide process optimization and operational efficiencies that improve end user experience.

• Ensure effective collaboration between Virgin Active IT Service and suppliers/vendors who provide infrastructure services.

• Managing design, installation, maintenance, and retirement of IT Infrastructure

• Manage the suppliers that handles Virgin Active DC, network, server, backup and DR services

• Build a strong relationship with the security team to ensure smooth rollout of security initiatives and ensuring the Virgin Active IT security policies are implemented

• Provide clear well written technical documentation of IT systems and processes

• Ensure storage, backup and disaster recover strategies and plans are in place to support capacity and compute requirements

• Ensure local and wide area networks are maintained, documented and monitored

• Look for the most cost effective wide area network in line with the overall network strategy.

• Develop strategies to maintain and manage core IT infrastructure while focusing on continual service improvement.

• Implement and drive adoption of IT policies and strategy

• Establish standards and documentation for ITIL and Infrastructure processes and drive the controls around these standards

• Setup metrics and monitoring to ensure infrastructure is delivered to agreed service levels with relevant reporting and scorecards

• Ensure supporting infrastructure used to manage workstation estate is in good working order and the Virgin Active estate is patched and up to date

• Embrace our values and focus on making IT irresistible to all consumers of Virgin Active IT services

• Work with multiple IT and business groups to manage capacity planning, demand and allocation of infrastructure resources

• Investigate opportunities to improve processes by leverage automation (where relevant) to simplify and accelerate the operations process

• Management of maintenance and service level agreements with suppliers

• Manage and control procurement process relevant to your area

• Act as a major incident manager (MIM) on rotation for P1 incidents out of working hours                           

NB! if you do not hear from us within 4 weeks after the advert has closed. Kindly consider your application unsuccessful.