It Operations Lead

Ecowize; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Ecowize seeks an experienced IT Operations Lead to own the day-to-day stability, performance, and security of its IT infrastructure. You will act as the primary escalation point for operational issues and manage vendor and consultant ecosystems.

Responsibilities include maintaining incident response, building an on-call rotation, enforcing SLAs, and guiding the IT team. You will report to the Head of IT and coordinate with system owners to sustain business uptime.

Qualifications

• Experience leading IT operations, incident management and on-call rotations.
• Proven ability to manage vendor relationships and enforce SLAs.
• Strong leadership, coaching, and delegation skills for an IT operations team.

Responsibilities

• Establish and run incident response framework and 24/7 alerting.
• Act as crisis commander during outages and major incidents.
• Govern external MSPs/consultants and ensure SLA delivery and accountability.
• Mentor and manage IT Engineers and service desk staff.
• Translate technical data into weekly operational health reports for execs.

Skills

Incident management

Crisis management

IT operations leadership

Vendor governance

SLA enforcement

Team leadership

On-call rotation

Operational reporting

Job description

At Ecowize, we rely on our IT systems to keep the business running reliably every day. We are seeking an experienced IT Operations Lead who can take full ownership of the day-to-day stability, performance, and security of our infrastructure.

In this role, you will act as the primary escalation point for all operational issues and manage our vendor and consulting ecosystem.

High-Level Job Objectives:

Incident & Problem Management

• Establish, maintain, and execute the Business's incident response framework, acting as the primary escalation point for all operational issues.
• Act as the "Crisis Commander" for outages, the final line of defence before an issue reaches the Head of IT.
• Build and own a formal on-call rotation and 24/7 alerting coverage, closing the current gap in after-hours monitoring.

Vendor & Consultant Governance

• Hold external partners to account for delivery quality and contracted service levels, ensuring SLAs are met and issues are resolved without unnecessary escalation.
• Serve as the primary interface for external MSPs and IT consultants (including Netsurit, First Technology, and Vikele), ensuring SLAs are met.
• Progressively insource security alert triage, reducing the Business's reliance on external partners over time.

Team Development & Leadership

• Mentor and manage the internal service desk / tactical team (IT Engineers), building a culture of autonomy and technical ownership.
• Support the professional growth of team members through coaching, delegation, and structured development.
• Coordinate day-to-day workload and priorities across the operational team.

Operational Reporting & Governance

• Translate messy technical data into clean, operational health metrics for the Head of IT on a weekly basis.
• Distinguish genuine business-critical issues from operational noise, reducing unnecessary escalations reaching the EXCO.
• Flag vendor SLA items that require the Head of IT's direct relationship intervention.

Infrastructure Stability, Security & Compliance

• Own the day-to-day stability, performance, and security of Ecowize's infrastructure.
• Ensure IT operations align with cybersecurity, governance and POPIA-aligned compliance standards.
• Coordinate with IT Systems Owners on the operational health of business-critical applications.