Infrastructure Manager

Location: Central London

Working Pattern: Hybrid – up to 3 days per week onsite

Employment Type: Permanent

The Opportunity

We are working with a well-established, multi-site organisation operating within a highly regulated, customer-facing environment to recruit an experienced Infrastructure Manager.

This is a senior infrastructure position with responsibility for the ownership, resilience, performance and continued development of a business-critical technology estate supporting multiple operational locations.

The organisation has recently undergone a significant period of infrastructure modernisation, including increased adoption of Microsoft Azure and the wider Microsoft technology stack.

With much of the core transformation now delivered, the focus is shifting towards stabilisation, optimisation and continuous improvement – ensuring the environment remains resilient, secure, commercially efficient and aligned with the needs of the wider business.

A significant proportion of BAU infrastructure delivery is provided through an external Managed Service Provider. As a result, this isn't simply a hands-on engineering position.

The successful candidate will act as the internal owner of the infrastructure environment, combining strong technical knowledge with supplier management, architecture, stakeholder engagement and commercial judgement.

Key Responsibilities

You will be responsible for:

• Taking ownership of infrastructure services across a complex, multi-site technology estate.
• Maintaining oversight of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Windows and remaining on-premise infrastructure.
• Ensuring infrastructure services remain highly available, resilient, secure and appropriately supported.
• Managing and challenging the organisation's Managed Service Provider and other strategic technology suppliers.
• Holding third parties accountable for service performance, technical delivery, contractual commitments and value for money.
• Assessing technical proposals from suppliers and determining whether solutions are appropriate, proportionate and commercially viable.
• Providing technical direction and ensuring the organisation retains appropriate internal knowledge and control within an outsourced operating model.
• Developing and maintaining infrastructure standards, roadmaps and technical documentation.
• Identifying legacy infrastructure, technical debt, unsupported technology and areas requiring modernisation.
• Supporting the continued optimisation and rationalisation of the technology estate.
• Reviewing Azure utilisation and identifying opportunities to improve performance and control cloud expenditure.
• Maintaining appropriate disaster recovery, business continuity and infrastructure resilience capability.
• Supporting and providing senior oversight during major infrastructure incidents.
• Working closely with cybersecurity, applications, service delivery and other technology functions.
• Supporting infrastructure requirements associated with business change, projects and individual operational locations.
• Managing infrastructure risks, vulnerabilities, dependencies and remediation activities.
• Working with senior business stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into appropriate technology solutions.
• Presenting technical risks, options and recommendations in clear business language.
• Balancing technical best practice against cost, risk, operational requirements and commercial value.

Technology Environment

The wider environment includes technologies such as:

• Microsoft 365
• Windows Server
• Active Directory / Entra ID
• VMware / Hyper‑V
• Fortinet
• Networking and connectivity
• SQL / database technologies
• SaaS and cloud-hosted applications
• Backup, disaster recovery and business continuity technologies

Candidates aren't expected to be the deepest technical specialist across every technology.

The important requirement is having sufficient infrastructure breadth and technical credibility to understand the environment, make informed decisions and effectively challenge internal and external technical specialists.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for an experienced Infrastructure Manager, Infrastructure Lead or senior infrastructure professional who is ready to take broad ownership of a business-critical technology estate.

You should bring:

• Strong experience managing or taking senior ownership of enterprise infrastructure environments.
• Good Microsoft Azure and broader Microsoft infrastructure experience.
• Strong understanding of hybrid cloud and on-premise infrastructure.
• Experience across infrastructure resilience, disaster recovery and business continuity.
• Previous experience working with an MSP or within an outsourced/co‑managed infrastructure model.
• The confidence and technical credibility to challenge MSPs and technology suppliers.
• Strong third‑party and vendor‑management capability.
• Experience supporting complex, business‑critical or high‑availability environments.
• Strong stakeholder‑management skills, including working with senior non‑technical stakeholders.
• The ability to translate technical problems and risks into clear commercial and operational language.
• Experience contributing to infrastructure architecture, solution design and technology roadmaps.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security, risk and governance.
• A pragmatic approach to technology, balancing technical best practice with cost and business requirements.
• Experience leading infrastructure projects, migrations, modernisation or transformation initiatives.
• The ability to operate autonomously and take accountability for infrastructure decisions.

Particularly Relevant Backgrounds

Experience supporting a multi‑site, customer‑facing or operationally critical organisation would be particularly valuable.

Relevant sectors could include:

• Hospitality
• Leisure and entertainment
• Retail
• Gaming
• Media
• Professional services
• Transport
• Other regulated or 24/7 operational environments

Direct sector experience isn't essential.

The organisation is primarily interested in candidates who understand what it means to support infrastructure where technology availability has a direct impact on business operations, customers and revenue.

The Person

This role would particularly suit someone who has progressed beyond being purely a hands‑on infrastructure engineer but still retains strong technical credibility.

You’ll need to be comfortable moving between technical and business conversations – whether that’s reviewing an infrastructure design with an MSP, managing a major incident, challenging the cost of a proposed solution or explaining an infrastructure risk to a senior stakeholder.

You’ll be joining an established technology function rather than being expected to rebuild everything from scratch. The opportunity is to take ownership of the infrastructure estate, continue its modernisation and ensure the organisation gets the maximum value from both its technology and its external partners.

Location: Central London

Hybrid: Up to 3 days per week onsite

Permanent

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