Permanent
Location: Bradford (hybrid – 2-3 days per week onsite)
Salary: up to £77,405 (plus car user allowance starting at £1,250 per annum)
Industry: Not for Profit

About the Client

Our client is undergoing a significant period of transformation, modernising their technology and operating model to better support colleagues, customers, and long-term organisational goals. With a strong social purpose at their core, they are focused on innovation, resilience, and sustainability, creating services that genuinely improve people’s lives.

They foster a collaborative, inclusive working environment where ideas are encouraged and change is embraced. This is an organisation investing in both its technology landscape and its people, offering a genuine opportunity to shape the future of IT operations at scale.

How you’ll spend your day
As Head of IT Operations & Service Delivery, you’ll take ownership of service and technical operations, ensuring critical systems are secure, resilient, and cost-effective. This is a senior leadership role combining hands-on technical depth with strategic oversight.

You’ll lead operational teams across end-user services, infrastructure, platforms, and applications, spanning on-premise and cloud environments. Alongside day-to-day operational excellence, you’ll drive major transformation initiatives, including a multi-year migration from on-prem infrastructure to Azure.

Key responsibilities include:

• Leading Service Operations and Technical Operations teams to deliver stable, secure, and highly available services
• Acting as a senior technical authority, deep-diving into complex Azure, networking, and cyber incidents when required
• Defining and delivering the IT operations strategy, service roadmap, and cost-aware operating model
• Driving resilience through disaster recovery, business continuity planning, and platform hardening
• Reducing incident impact and mean time to restore (MTTR) across critical services
• Strengthening cyber security posture through embedded controls, telemetry, and automated response playbooks
• Architecting scalable, secure Azure solutions aligned to best practice
• Championing service excellence through SLAs/SLOs, ITIL-aligned processes, and continual improvement

What you’ll bring to this role
You’ll be an experienced IT operations leader, comfortable operating at both strategic and technical levels within complex environments. You’ll bring the credibility to influence senior stakeholders, alongside the technical depth to guide teams through challenging operational and security scenarios.

We’re looking for someone with:

• Proven experience leading IT Operations in a medium-to-large, complex organisation
• Strong knowledge of cyber security frameworks, threat detection, and incident response
• Hands-on experience with IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and hybrid cloud strategies
• Deep understanding of infrastructure, networking, and enterprise systems
• Experience establishing and enforcing ITIL-aligned release and service management frameworks
• Strong awareness of infrastructure and application dependencies during releases
• Excellent communication and influencing skills at senior leadership level

Perks & Benefits:

• Annual Leave – 28 days of holiday, plus bank holidays, increasing by 1 day up each year up to 33 (pro rata for part time).
  • An extra day to celebrate your birthday.
  • You can buy up to two additional weeks of annual leave through salary sacrifice (at your manager’s discretion).
  • You can also sell up to 3 days annual leave back.
• Maternity/Paternity/Adoption Leave
  • For maternity/adoption/shared parental leave:
    • 6 weeks at 100%
    • 20 weeks at 50% + Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP)
    • 13 weeks at SMP
  • For paternity leave:
    • 2 weeks full pay leave
    • 2 weeks unpaid leave
• Medical Leave
  • 10 extra days paid medical leave for medical appointments and treatment which are related to a disability, serious diagnosed illness, terminal conditions, fertility treatment, menopause related treatment, and gender reassignment—without the need to work this time back.
• Employee Assistance Programme
  • EAP provider offers 24/7 support including virtual and face to face counselling, wellbeing tools and self-help resources and legal and financial support.
• Pension Scheme
  • Defined Benefit Scheme – 7.5% colleague contribution
    • It gives you a pension based on the average of your pensionable earnings during your membership in the scheme. This is calculated using a fraction of 1/90th of your pensionable pay, known as the accrual rate, which is then revalued in line with inflation.
    • The revalued pension amounts earned each year are added together to calculate your guaranteed pension at retirement.
    • There’s also the option to salary sacrifice contributions after two years in the scheme.
    • Only around 4% of defined benefit schemes in the UK are still open to new members.
• Defined Contribution Scheme – 4% matched colleague contribution
  • It pays contributions into your personal ‘pension pot’, which are then invested in funds selected either by you or an investment manager.
  • The benefits you get when you retire are flexible and depend on the value of your pot at that time.
  • Contributions can be made through salary sacrifice so you can take advantage of the National Insurance savings this brings.
• Life Assurance
  • Life assurance cover provided at three times your gross annual salary for all colleagues.

What happens next?

One of our Recruitment Consultants will be in touch and inform you if you’ve been successful to the next stage of the process or not, which is a qualification call where we will tell you more about the role and the client, and understand more about you, your experience and career aspirations.

Should we both wish to proceed, we will submit your details to the client and be in touch regarding the outcome and any further steps.

Interview Process:

The client is committed to a supportive, transparent interview experience designed to reflect their values.

Stage 1 – Initial Conversation
A Teams call with the hiring manager to discuss the role, the team, and your background, experience, and career goals.
Planned dates: 11th–12th February

Stage 2 – Final Interview & Presentation
An in-person interview at the Bradford office, including a presentation outlining your proposed strategic direction for the IT Operations function. You’ll also complete a short questionnaire in advance.
Planned dates: 18th–19th February

Equal Opportunities:

We are committed to providing equal opportunities for all candidates and welcome applications from individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity, marital status, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law. As an employment agency for permanent and contract hires, we are dedicated to promoting a diverse and inclusive workforce, and we encourage applications from underrepresented groups to drive innovation and equality within the workplace.

Should you require any reasonable adjustments please let us know so we can accommodate for any interactions with us at Biometric Talent, but also inform the client to ensure reasonable adjustments are made to allow for a fair and equitable process.

How to Apply:

To apply, please submit your CV and cover letter to ian.fitzgerald@biometrictalent.com