VP of Internal Systems & IT

These seats are distinct on purpose, and the seams between them matter more than the boxes.

VP of Security. Security owns the strategy, the security program, the security team, detection and response, and the control standards. You own the operation of the controls that live inside IT: identity, endpoints, device posture, access lifecycle. Security says what good looks like; you make it true across every laptop and every account, and you bring the evidence to audits. Security also builds the GRC function that will take privacy program ownership from you, so an early piece of this partnership is getting that handover right. This partnership fails when it turns into a negotiation at audit time. It works when the two of you agree on the standard before the tooling is bought.

VP of Data. Data owns the data platform, analytics, BI, decision science, and AI-first access to Stord's data. You own the business systems that are among the most important sources feeding it, and the governance of the master data inside them. Data owns what a metric means; you own whether the systems capture it that way. If a number is wrong, Data will usually find it and you will usually be the one who can fix it at source. You are jointly accountable for the business trusting that number.

Procurement and Finance. Procurement owns the commercial process, supplier relationships, and negotiation. You own the technical evaluation, the architecture fit, the security posture, and the honest utilisation picture that tells Procurement what leverage they have.

Legal. Legal owns the legal calls: lawful basis, controller and processor posture, contract and DPA language, and what we say to a regulator. You own the operational program today and the systems enforcement permanently. Expect to be the person who tells Legal what the systems can and cannot do, rather than waiting to be told.

Head of Engineering. Engineering owns customer-facing software, the production estate, and our applied AI work, and chooses the tooling its teams build with. You are their internal counterpart, not their competitor. You administer the tooling they choose, you hold them to the same portfolio discipline as every other function, and when an internal problem needs software built instead of bought, you bring the case and they help you resource it.

Stord has a documented enterprise systems architecture with named owners and a prioritized roadmap the executive team has actually agreed to

Business leaders trust the numbers coming out of our systems, and the shadow spreadsheets are measurably fewer

The SaaS estate is fully inventoried with owners, renewals, and utilization visible, and you have rationalised a meaningful portion of it with the savings attached

IT gets ahead of problems instead of reacting to them. Onboarding and offboarding are fast and complete, and employees say so

Identity, access, and endpoint controls meet the standard the VP of Security has set, and hold up under audit without a scramble

Privacy operations are in better shape than you found them, and the program has either transitioned cleanly to GRC or has a dated plan to

At least two functions outside R&D are running a materially better process than a year earlier, with AI doing work a person used to do and numbers to show it

If we closed an acquisition this year, its business systems are on Stord's stack rather than bolted on the side

You have a leadership team you trust and a function known for getting things done

10+ years leading enterprise systems, business technology, corporate IT, or a combined function, with direct budget and hiring ownership

Has owned a complex multi-system business technology ecosystem end to end: CRM, ERP, and HRIS at minimum, through a migration or consolidation and not steady-state administration

Has run corporate IT as a proactive function at a company growing fast, ideally through international expansion

Has owned IT for distributed physical sites and not only offices and remote workers: floor networking, handheld devices, connectivity, and the operational stakes that come with them

Has owned a SaaS portfolio company-wide and worked properly alongside Procurement, with consolidation and savings you can point to

Has run or materially supported a privacy or compliance programme in practice: GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or equivalent. You do not need to be a privacy lawyer, but you need to have been accountable for evidence that held up

Has integrated business systems following an acquisition and can describe what got merged into one operating model, not what was left running in parallel

Background in technology or tech-enabled businesses. Logistics or operations experience is a plus, not a requirement

AI

An AI adoption story from inside an operating function, measured after the fact. We will ask what changed, who stopped doing what, and how you knew

Working knowledge of the current AI and agentic tooling landscape, sharp enough to make build-versus-buy calls yourself instead of relying on a vendor's deck

A view on where AI changes a back-office process and where it is theater. We would rather hear one honest "that didn't work" than five polished case studies

Technical depth

Deep fluency in enterprise application architecture, integration patterns, and master data management

Solid grounding in IT operations, identity management, and endpoint and access controls. You do not have to do the work yourself, but you need to know when it is being done well

Enough technical credibility to read an integration design, push back on an approach, and hold your own with senior engineers and with the VP of Data

Leadership

Earns trust across functions. Finance, Engineering, Revenue, People, and Operations all want you involved

Change management that sticks: you can get a Sales or Support team to adopt a new way of working, not just tolerate a mandate

Clear communicator who can take a systems problem to an executive team as a business decision

Comfortable operating in the seams between peer VPs without needing the org chart to resolve every question for you

Bonus points

You have taken a company through IPO readiness or operated inside a public company, including SOX IT general controls. We don’t know our future but we want the rigor of a public company

You have supported international expansion: multi-entity ERP, multi-country HRIS and payroll, data residency

You have supported a business with a physical operation, where a systems failure means something does not ship

You have been on the receiving end of an acquisition as well as the acquiring side

The scope is deliberately bounded. You will not own our AI engineers, our forward-deployed engineering team, or our security program. Those are separate seats. If your ambition is to build a product engineering organization, this is not that role and we would be wasting each other's time.

What you get instead is an unambiguous mandate over the systems the whole company depends on, at a business doubling in size, acquiring, and expanding internationally with both a physical and virtual team. Nobody here needs convincing that this function matters, which is an argument most people in this job spend their first year losing somewhere else.

If you have worked somewhere that talked about systems excellence but never funded it, this is your opportunity to realize that dream.