Head Of Platform Operations

Be Different Recruitment; Gauteng; On-site; ZAR 1 200 000 - 1 800 000; Full time

Job summary

A leading recruitment agency is seeking a senior leader in IT operations with over 12 years of experience, including 5 years in leadership roles. The role involves strategic and operational leadership of infrastructure and PaaS platforms along with managing application operations. Ideal candidates will demonstrate strong expertise in multi-cloud environments, ITSM, and AIOps, along with exceptional leadership and communication skills. This position is based in Gauteng, South Africa and offers the opportunity to drive significant service improvements and client value realization.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of IT operations experience with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles.
• Strong expertise across infrastructure, PaaS platforms, and application operations.
• Knowledge of South African legal/regulatory frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute platform operations strategy.
• Oversee all infrastructure operations across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.
• Lead end-to-end application operations, ensuring minimal downtime.

Skills

IT operations leadership

Infrastructure expertise

Multi-cloud management

ITSM and AIOps experience

Vendor management

Client engagement skills

Job description

In order to be considered the following is required:

• 12+ years' IT operations experience with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles
• Strong expertise across infrastructure (compute, network, storage, hybrid / cloud), PaaS platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, OpenShift) and application operations
• Proven track record in managing multi‑cloud and hybrid enterprise environments
• Demonstrated experience in ITSM, AIOps, observability, and large‑scale service delivery
• Knowledge of South African legal / regulatory frameworks and global best practices (POPIA, Cybercrimes Act, ISO)
• Vendor / OEM management and contract execution experience
• Exceptional leadership, communication and client engagement skills
• SLA compliance across infrastructure, PaaS and application layers
• Mean time to detect (MTTD) and resolve (MTTR) incidents
• Service availability, reliability and performance improvements
• Customer satisfaction and value realization outcomes
• Cost optimization and resource utilization efficiency
• Team performance, skill maturity and retention
• Compliance audit success and risk mitigation effectiveness

Duties & Responsibilities:

Strategic & Operational Leadership:

• Define and execute platform operations strategy, covering infrastructure, PaaS and application operations
• Integrate operations across compute, storage, networking, PaaS layers and business‑critical applications
• Represent Platform Operations in Service Management Centre (SMC) and across horizontal and vertical forums
• Align platform and application operations to strategic imperatives: growth, customer centricity, innovation, compliance and operational excellence

Infrastructure & Platform Operations:

• Oversee all infrastructure operations (on‑premises, hybrid, and cloud: Azure, AWS, GCP)
• Ensure uptime, scalability, and performance of infrastructure services
• Govern PaaS operations: container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift), middleware, and integration platforms
• Establish resilient DR, BCP, and capacity management across infrastructure and platform layers
• Drive automation, observability, and AIOps‑led monitoring across infrastructure and PaaS services

Application Operations:

• Lead end‑to‑end application operations (AppOps), including deployment, lifecycle management, monitoring and performance optimization.
• Govern incident, problem, and change management for critical applications, ensuring minimal downtime
• Partner with development and DevOps teams for CI / CD pipelines, release management, and security compliance
• Drive business application adoption, value realization and performance improvements for clients

Governance, Compliance & Risk:

• Establish policies, standards, and work instructions covering infrastructure, platform, and application operations
• Ensure compliance with South African legislation (POPIA, PFMA, FSCA / PA, Cybercrimes Act) and international standards:

• ISO
• ITIL 4

• Govern data sovereignty requirements (e.g. SAPS data remaining within South Africa)
• Manage risk and issue registers, with proactive mitigation and escalation processes

Stakeholder & Client Engagement:

• Serve as the senior operational leader for infrastructure, platform, and application matters across clients
• Support client executives in value realization forums, operational reviews and executive governance sessions
• Manage escalations with OEMs and partners (ScienceLogic, Motadata, Seceon, CorrServe, Resolve)
• Demonstrate measurable value outcomes (cost savings, performance improvements, SLA compliance) in client engagements

People & Performance Leadership:

• Lead, mentor, and manage cross‑functional teams (infrastructure engineers, platform specialists, application support teams, operations managers)
• Define clear RASCI matrices, balanced scorecards, and KPIs for each role under Platform Operations
• Foster a high‑performance culture, embedding ethics and workforce framework across remote and onsite teams
• Ensure continuous learning, certification, and professional development

Innovation & Continuous Improvement:

• Drive maturity through Foundation, Crawl, Walk, Run model
• Advance automation, self‑healing, and autonomous IT practices
• Introduce and operationalise new service capabilities: CMDBaaS, Observability‑as‑a‑Service, AIOps‑as‑a‑Service, and Autonomous IT‑as‑a‑Service
• Ensure cost efficiency, workload optimisation, and continuous service improvements