IT Manager – Internal Technology Operations

Job Summary

We are hiring an IT Manager to operate and mature Vanguard’s internal IT function. This role will formalize and strengthen internal IT through clear ownership, reliable employee support, stronger access and security controls, vendor visibility, and practical technology governance.

The role is hands-on and operational, while also building the foundation for a scalable internal IT operating model. You will own employee IT support, identity and access administration, device and endpoint management, SaaS administration, on-premise server and virtual machine operations, availability of the platform company applications run on, vendor coordination, risk visibility, incident readiness, and technology spend transparency.

This is not only a support role. The IT Manager is expected to turn technology priorities into dependable internal IT operations: predictable service, accountable ownership, secure access, resilient systems, controlled vendors, and clear reporting to leadership.

Key Responsibilities

Internal IT Operations and Service Management

• Own day-to-day internal IT support for employees, including devices, accounts, collaboration tools, access requests, troubleshooting, and issue resolution.

• Establish and manage a single IT intake process, service catalogue, escalation path, and support workflow.

• Define, monitor, and improve service targets for common employee IT requests.

• Standardize onboarding, offboarding, and role-change processes for employees, contractors, and other approved users.

• Maintain accurate records of users, devices, systems, administrators, vendors, contracts, renewals, and critical dependencies, with named business and technical owners and recovery expectations for critical systems.

• Improve employee technology experience by reducing repeated issues, unclear ownership, and support delays.

Identity, Access, and Endpoint Management

• Own identity and access administration across core company systems.

• Enforce MFA and minimum access-control standards for priority systems.

• Make joiner, mover, and leaver access changes auditable, measurable, and repeatable.

• Implement or improve endpoint management, patching, device lifecycle, asset tracking, and device security practices.

• Coordinate regular access reviews with business system owners and leadership where required.

Servers, Virtualisation, and Application Uptime

• Own day-to-day operation of the company’s on-premise host servers and the virtual machines running on them, including health monitoring, patching, capacity, and hardware lifecycle.

• Manage the full VM lifecycle: provisioning from standard builds, change control, resizing, backup and snapshot practice, ownership assignment, and decommissioning of unused machines.

• Maintain an inventory of host servers, virtual machines, and the applications running on them, with named owners, dependencies, and criticality.

• Own the availability of the platform that company applications run on: agree uptime expectations with application owners, monitor service health, and lead infrastructure-side incident response and follow-up when services degrade or fail. Application code and releases remain with the owning engineering or product teams.

• Plan capacity, hardware refresh, backup, restoration, and recovery arrangements so that growth in VMs and applications does not outpace the infrastructure.

• Coordinate with application and engineering teams and infrastructure vendors on changes, outages, and maintenance windows.

• Participate in an agreed out-of-hours on-call arrangement for priority infrastructure incidents.

Security, Resilience, and Risk Management

• Establish baseline security controls for internal IT systems, employee devices, identity, collaboration tools, and priority SaaS platforms.

• Maintain an IT risk register covering access, vendors, systems, renewals, resilience, unmanaged tools, and operational gaps, supported by documented incident escalation and communication procedures.

• Ensure business continuity expectations are documented and tested for priority services where applicable.

• Report technology risks, control gaps, and remediation priorities clearly to leadership.

Applications, SaaS, and Vendor Governance

• Maintain visibility of company SaaS tools, contracts, renewals, administrators, users, and business owners.

• Establish an approved-SaaS process, renewal calendar, and basic governance for new technology purchases.

• Support procurement, vendor assessment, renewal decisions, and technology standardisation.

• Partner with business teams to clarify application ownership, operational responsibility, access control, and support expectations.

• Identify duplicate tools, unmanaged subscriptions, unused licences, vendor risks, and avoidable technology spend.

Roadmap, Budgeting, and Reporting

• Maintain an operational IT roadmap covering service improvements, access controls, security baselines, resilience, tooling, vendors, and staffing needs.

• Create baseline reporting for technology spend, renewal exposure, support volume, resolution time, access-control performance, and risk reduction.

• Provide input on internal staffing, outsourcing, managed-service partner needs, and budget priorities as the company scales.

• Provide regular updates on IT operations, major risks, priorities, dependencies, and investment needs.

Job Requirements

• Degree or diploma in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Minimum 5 years of relevant IT operations experience, including at least 3 years running production on-premise servers and virtualised environments, alongside ownership of internal IT support, identity/access administration, endpoint management, SaaS administration, and vendor coordination.

• Experience supporting employee onboarding, offboarding, device setup, account provisioning, access requests, troubleshooting, and IT service workflows.

• Strong understanding of MFA, access reviews, least-privilege access, endpoint security, patching, backups, incident escalation, and practical operational security controls.

• Hands-on experience with at least one production hypervisor platform, such as Hyper-V, Proxmox, VMware, or KVM. This should include VM lifecycle management, patching, monitoring, and backup/restore.

• Working knowledge of Linux and Windows server administration, and of monitoring and alerting for infrastructure and application availability.

• Experience managing collaboration platforms, productivity tools, SaaS applications, user accounts, devices, and IT assets.

• Ability to introduce practical, repeatable processes where ways of working are still developing or informal.

• Strong vendor-management and documentation skills, including contracts, renewals, administrators, ownership records, and support expectations.

• Ability to communicate technology risks, trade-offs, costs, and priorities clearly to non-technical stakeholders and senior leadership.

• Demonstrated ability to take ownership, clarify responsibilities, and follow operational improvements through to completion.

Preferred Experience

• Experience establishing or maturing an internal IT function in a growing company.

• Familiarity with ITSM practices, service catalogues, asset management, endpoint management, identity providers, MDM, SSO, SaaS administration, and ticketing workflows.

• Experience coordinating managed service providers, cybersecurity partners, infrastructure partners, or other specialist vendors.

• Experience with budgeting, procurement support, renewal management, technology portfolio governance, or software licence optimisation.

• Familiarity with business continuity planning, backup restoration testing, incident response preparation, and operational risk reporting.