Head of IT

Location: London, with frequent travel to other locations

Department: Operations

Reports To: CTO

Position Overview

Verne is seeking an experienced and driven Head of IT to lead the organisation's IT strategy, infrastructure and service delivery. This role is responsible for overseeing the design, implementation, and management of all internal IT systems across the group, ensuring secure, resilient, and scalable services that support business operations, compliance obligations, and future growth. This position requires substantial experience in technical leadership managing IT within regulated, multi-site or critical infrastructure environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and execute the company IT strategy, ensuring scalability and alignment with operational objectives, business risk appetite, legal obligations, and industry best practice.
• Take full ownership of the company's digital and IT infrastructure and ensure support for entry and scale up in new markets.
• Collaborate with business leaders to understand their technology needs.
• Lead, appropriately scale and mentor the IT team to ensure a high-performing, service-oriented department.
• Oversee the successful delivery of IT projects, including system upgrades, migrations, and digital initiatives.
• Advise leadership on technology trends and opportunities.
• Manage and optimise day-to-day IT operations across service management, hardware, applications, infrastructure, networking and data and analytics.
• In partnership with Information Security, develop and implement robust processes and tool sets across security architecture and application domains to deter, monitor and respond to threats, vulnerabilities and the changing IT risk and regulatory landscape.
• Work closely with Compliance to implement and maintain strong IT/OT and Cybersecurity controls and reporting and ensure compliance with all relevant legal and regulatory requirements and standards such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS and NIS2.
• Identify and mitigate IT related risks, including those related to cybersecurity, third-party services, and business continuity, while developing and maintaining effective disaster recovery planning and strategies.
• Lead incident investigations and root cause analyses, acting as the senior escalation point and lead for IT related incidents and service disruptions.
• Represent IT at senior leadership and board-level forums, translating technical concepts into business language.
• Lead IT planning and investment to support business growth, transformation, and digital innovation including data governance, BI platforms, reporting, and AI/ML initiatives.
• Establish a structured approach to managing the full lifecycle of existing and future application systems, ensuring all platforms remain scalable, secure, and aligned with business needs.
• Ensure uptime, security, and performance of all systems and platforms.
• Monitor and control IT budgets, contracts, and vendor relationships including supporting the Procurement function in developing IT compliance requirements and vendor assessments.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to scope, prioritise, and deliver technology solutions that improve efficiency and user experience.

Key Functional Delivery Areas

• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Service Management
• Data and Analytics
• IT Governance, Compliance and Security
• Project Delivery
• Innovation

Key Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field required; a Master's degree is preferred.
• 10+ years in IT roles, with 5+ years in senior leadership position.
• Proven experience in developing and deploying IT strategy, and/or a senior technical leadership role, ideally in a high-availability, compliance-driven, or critical infrastructure environment.
• Strong technical understanding of enterprise architecture, networking, infrastructure, cloud platforms (e.g. Microsoft 365, Azure) and IT/OT and Cybersecurity.