Head of IT (Onsite, London) — £100,000–£115,000
Company: Leading UK women’s fashion retailer (high-growth)
Location: London, W12 (White City) — Onsite
Type: Permanent
Salary: £100k–£115k base (DOE)
The Role
We’re looking for a Head of IT who can combine strategic leadership with hands-on technical authority. You’ll shape and modernise the IT function while maintaining excellent service delivery for a fast-paced, multi-site retail environment. This role suits someone who has progressed from an engineering background and is still comfortable getting into the detail when needed.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership & Team
- Lead, mentor and develop the IT team; build a culture of accountability and continuous improvement
- Implement structured performance reviews, development plans and certification roadmaps
- Recruit and retain high-performing technical talent; strengthen succession planning and resilience
Technical & Architecture (Hands-on)
- Own and evolve a hybrid estate (legacy on-prem + cloud) ensuring reliable integration
- Manage a mixed Mac + Windows endpoint environment (e.g., JAMF and Intune)
- Act as technical authority for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, identity/SSO (incl. Entra ID)
- Be the escalation point for complex incidents (network, servers, performance, security)
- Oversee patching, firewalling, DR replication and broader security/compliance controls
Business Delivery & Governance
- Scale the IT operating model to support a £250m+ retail business
- Move performance measurement beyond SLAs to business-impact KPIs/OKRs
- Set and enforce documentation/architecture standards; QA internal and vendor delivery
- Manage suppliers/SaaS partners and hardware vendors with strong operational governance
Service Delivery & Adoption
- Drive a customer-first IT service culture across HQ and stores
- Mature service desk from reactive to proactive; reduce downtime and improve user experience
- Lead rollouts/migrations via robust change management to avoid peak-trading disruption
Required Experience
- Senior IT leadership experience in a fast-paced, complex environment (ideally £250m+ turnover and/or multi-site)
- Clear engineering roots (Systems Admin / Network Engineer / Cloud Engineer / Infrastructure Architect)
- Retail/e-commerce and international operations exposure strongly preferred
Technical Skills (Hands-on expected)
- Hybrid cloud + virtualisation
- Identity & access: AD / Entra ID / Okta / Google Cloud Identity
- Endpoint management: Apple Business Manager, JAMF, Intune, GPOs
- Networking/security: routing/switching, firewalls, VPN, SD‑WAN, Wi‑Fi (retail footprint)
- Scripting/automation (PowerShell/Bash/Python) desirable
Key Competencies
- High technical credibility; strong vendor management/challenge
- Pragmatic problem-solving with commercial awareness
- Comfortable in ambiguity and competing priorities
- Able to translate technical detail into clear business outcomes
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