Senior IT Director in Manchester

Requirements

• Senior Director IT leadership across a multi-site, complex technology environment, with single-point accountability for a major transformation.
• Single-point accountability for cybersecurity at scale, including incident response, regulatory exposure, and board-level reporting on risk.
• A background in games, VFX, animation, or a similarly technical creative studio. You must understand how games are made and how IT can directly amplify development throughput.
• An outcome-driven operating philosophy. You do not lead with ITIL doctrine. You lead with the business and use frameworks where they help.
• Demonstrated ability to lead large structural change inside operationally volatile environments.
• Commercial credibility. You can defend a budget, prioritise ruthlessly, and explain IT in language the COO and CFO understand.
• (Desirable) Shipped a III title. You know what launch pressure feels like.
• (Desirable) Hands-on familiarity with Perforce, game build systems, or large-scale dev pipeline infrastructure.
• (Desirable) Built or matured a security operations capability from low maturity.

What the job involves

• The corporate IT function exists to make that work possible at speed. This role builds the technology backbone that lets the studios keep pushing that frontier. It is not a back-office job. It is a force multiplier on what the company can ship.
• This is a newly created global leadership role reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, with single-point accountability for all corporate IT across CIG: service desk, end user compute, corporate network and infrastructure, IT security, hardware, licensing, vendor management, and the studio IT teams in all four locations.
• This is a transformation role. You will be accountable for stabilising material infrastructure and security risks in the near term, and for rebuilding the function so it materially accelerates how the studios ship.
• The opportunity is to reshape the operating model, the relationship with the studios, and the technology stack so that IT actively amplifies game development.
• Global accountability for corporate IT across four studios: service desk, infrastructure, security, licensing, vendor management, and the studio IT teams.
• Direct accountability for cybersecurity. You own the risk position, the roadmap, the audit posture, and the response.
• A new operating relationship between IT and development, with IT’s success measured by what it enables the studios to ship.
• A full re-evaluation of the technology stack and a costed multi-year plan.
• A costed infrastructure resilience plan for Manchester within 90 days, tied to the Squadron 42 launch window.
• Formal patch management, a tested ransomware response runbook, and a corporate penetration test completed before ship.
• An upgraded Manchester service desk capable of Tier 2 and Tier 3 work, with engineers who understand Perforce, build pipelines, and GPU workstations.
• A clear IT charter, jointly defined with the CTO, that sets out how IT engages with development teams, what we measure, and how we are governed.
• The IT budget and a multi-year investment plan tied to the commercial roadmap.