Senior Specialist - AITC

Role purpose and scope

Infrastructure strategy and operations

• Support the Head of IT with an infrastructure roadmap aligned to business needs, resilience, security, and growth.
• Assess capacity, lifecycle risks, and connectivity across sites; recommend upgrades and cost optimization; plan budgets, refresh cycles, cloud capacity, and projects.
• Manage servers, virtualization, storage, cloud, LAN/WAN, wireless, firewalls, internet connectivity, and end-user devices.
• Oversee monitoring, availability, capacity, performance, incidents, root-cause analysis, and controlled changes.
• Supervise infrastructure and end-user support against service levels; escalate application issues to application owners.
• Manage backup operations, restoration tests, and disaster recovery exercises against agreed recovery time and recovery point objectives.

IT service management and platforms

• Establish ITIL-aligned incident, major incident, problem, service request, change, and release management for infrastructure and end-user support.
• Maintain service catalogues, SLAs, operational-level agreements, escalation procedures, knowledge articles, and performance reporting; drive corrective actions and continual improvement.
• Maintain CMDB, asset and configuration records; ensure changes include risk assessments, approvals, testing, rollback plans, and post-implementation reviews.
• Oversee on-premises and cloud provisioning, configuration, operating systems, and platform lifecycle; manage directory services, identity, DNS, DHCP, and approved access.
• Provide secure hosting, connectivity, and readiness for business systems; application configuration, functionality, integrations, and support remain with application owners.

Cybersecurity and AI governance

• Implement infrastructure security policies, network segmentation, access controls, and system hardening with cybersecurity and governance teams, considering applicable UAE data protection requirements.
• Coordinate vulnerability assessments and penetration tests, track remediation, support security incident response and audit evidence, and maintain timely operating system, firmware, endpoint protection, and encryption controls.
• Maintain assigned ISO/IEC 27001 ISMS infrastructure controls, evidence, risk assessment support, audits, and corrective actions.
• Support AI governance policies and an inventory of approved AI services; coordinate infrastructure and security risk reviews before enablement.
• Implement approved AI identity, access, connectivity, data protection, and logging controls; restrict unauthorized AI tools and protect confidential information.
• Monitor AI access, infrastructure consumption, security events, and policy exceptions; maintain audit evidence, escalate incidents, and support secure and responsible AI awareness.

Vendors, projects, people, and reporting

• Manage infrastructure vendors, cloud and connectivity providers, maintenance contracts, renewals, and SLAs; evaluate technical proposals and negotiate costs with procurement.
• Lead infrastructure deployments, migrations, network upgrades, and site-readiness projects within approved scope, budget, timelines, and handover requirements.
• Lead and develop infrastructure engineers, support resources, and outsourced providers; assign tasks, monitor performance, and promote learning and knowledge transfer.
• Maintain architecture, network diagrams, asset inventories, configuration records, procedures, and recovery runbooks.
• Report availability, service levels, incidents, capacity, recovery results, security remediation, costs, and project status; recommend priorities on risk, resilience, investment, and improvement.

Education and experience

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field; a master's degree is preferred.
• Seven to ten years of progressive infrastructure and operations experience, including three to five years in a supervisory role covering service delivery, vendors, and projects.
• Experience managing multi-site networks, on-premises and cloud infrastructure, backup, disaster recovery, and end-user support.
• Practical experience with ITSM processes, service-level reporting, asset and configuration records, and ISO/IEC 27001 infrastructure controls, audit evidence, and corrective actions.
• Real estate, property management, or facilities management experience is highly desirable.

Technical and professional skills

• Strong knowledge of server operating systems, virtualization, storage, LAN/WAN, wireless networks, firewalls, identity services, and endpoint management.
• Proficiency in Azure or AWS cloud infrastructure, monitoring, backup and disaster recovery, security hardening, patching, incident management, and change management.
• Working knowledge of ITIL-aligned ITSM, service desk tools, CMDB and asset management, service metrics, and ISO/IEC 27001 ISMS requirements relevant to infrastructure.
• Working knowledge of AI governance, approved AI service enablement, data protection, access controls, usage monitoring, and AI-related infrastructure and security risk assessment.
• Strong leadership, analytical, problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management abilities.

Certifications

• Relevant cloud infrastructure, networking, virtualization, or IT service management certifications are desirable.
• ITIL Foundation is preferred; ISO/IEC 27001 Foundation, Implementer, or Internal Auditor certification is desirable.
• PMP or Prince2 certification is preferred.