Head of IT & Infrastructure - £100,000 plus benefits – London, Kings Cross

A rapidly growing organisation is looking for an experienced and hands-on Head of IT & Infrastructure to own the technology foundations that keep the business and people running as they scale. This is a senior leadership role with broad ownership and significant influence. You'll shape infrastructure standards, security posture, operational practices, and long-term technology roadmap while remaining close to the day-to-day implementation.

You'll inherit a successful, established manufacturing operation and play a critical role in delivering the next major growth milestone: a new 54,000 sq ft London facility scheduled to come online by December 2026. The standards, architecture, and operating model you establish there will become the blueprint for future sites as they continue to expand.

If you've built and led IT functions in scaling businesses before and enjoy combining strategic leadership with hands-on technical ownership, we'd love to hear from you.

What You’ll Own

• Systems & Networking
  • You will own the IT and infrastructure environment across manufacturing operations, including:
  • Supporting the existing production facility, which is established and operating at capacity.
  • Leading the IT design and implementation of a new 54,000 sq ft London facility.
  • Designing and maintaining network architecture across all sites, including switching, firewalls, VPNs, wireless networks, VLANs, and segmentation between corporate and production environments.
  • Ensuring seamless integration between software platforms, manufacturing systems, robotics infrastructure, and operational technology.
  • Establishing the standards and architectural principles that will be replicated across future facilities.
• Desktop, Identity & Security
  • Day-to-day desktop support and security operations are currently delivered through a managed service provider (MSP). You will:
  • Own the MSP relationship, including service delivery, SLAs, performance management, escalations, and cost control.
  • Define and maintain standards for identity, access management, endpoints, SaaS applications, and device management.
  • Oversee identity providers, SSO, provisioning, MDM across Mac, Windows, and Linux environments.
  • Partner with the People team to manage joiner, mover, and leaver processes.
  • Lead licence management, access reviews, and security governance.
  • Build the security and compliance maturity required to support a rapidly scaling business.
• Manufacturing Operations & Production Infrastructure
  • You will be responsible for the reliability, security, and scalability of production-critical systems, including:
  • Servers, storage, virtualisation platforms, and Linux-based systems.
  • Cloud and on-premise infrastructure environments.
  • System administration, patching, monitoring, backups, and capacity planning.
  • Disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
  • Monitoring, alerting, recovery processes, and change management for a 24/7 production environment.
• You’ll also:
  • Lead the IT workstream for the new London facility from day one.
  • Manage vendor selection, connectivity, cabling, network deployment, server rollout, and integration with manufacturing and robotics systems.
  • Act as the senior escalation point for complex production incidents where applications, infrastructure, and operational equipment intersect.
  • Partner closely with Software, Hardware, and R&D teams to support specialised networking and infrastructure requirements.
• Building the IT Function
  • This role goes beyond infrastructure ownership—you'll build and lead the IT function itself.
  • Define the future operating model for IT.
  • Recruit, develop, and manage the team's first internal hires.
  • Shape headcount planning and organisational structure as the company scales.
  • Own vendor management and contract negotiations.
  • Manage the IT budget and technology roadmap.
  • Establish scalable operational standards, documentation, automation, asset management, runbooks, and governance processes.

About You

You thrive in fast-moving environments and enjoy building technology functions from the ground up.

• 8+ years of experience in IT, infrastructure engineering, or systems administration.
• At least 2 years of leadership experience building or scaling an internal IT function.
• Strong hands-on expertise across networking, infrastructure, identity, security, and operations.
• Experience setting standards for change management, patching, monitoring, backup, recovery, access management, and incident response.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to engage effectively with both executive stakeholders and technical teams.
• A calm, structured approach to troubleshooting and incident management.

Technical Experience

We're particularly interested in candidates with experience across:

• Networking: switches, firewalls, VPNs, VLANs, segmentation, wireless networking.
• Infrastructure: Windows and Linux environments, Hyper-V, high availability architectures, NAS, storage, backup platforms.
• Identity & Access Management: IdPs, SSO, MDM, provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Security Operations: endpoint security, access governance, compliance, and operational security controls.

Desirable Experience

Any of the following would be advantageous:

• Manufacturing, industrial, production, media, broadcast, data centre, laboratory, scientific, or financial services environments.
• Integration of IT systems with robotics, manufacturing equipment, operational technology, or specialised production systems.
• Automation and scripting using Python, PowerShell, Bash, or similar technologies.
• Infrastructure monitoring, logging, and observability platforms.
• Backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions.
• Relevant certifications such as Network+, Security+, Linux, Microsoft, VMware, AWS, Azure, or equivalent.

What We Offer

• Salary – up to £100K plus benefits;
• 25 days annual leave
• Paid birthday leave
• Hybrid – 4 days in the office, 1 day at home
• Comprehensive pension scheme.
• Private medical insurance and wellbeing support.

This is a rare opportunity to define the technology foundations of a business entering its next phase of growth. You'll have the autonomy to shape strategy, build a team, establish standards, and deliver infrastructure that directly enables the company's long-term ambitions. If you're excited by ownership, scale, and the challenge of building something exceptional, we'd love to hear from you.