Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Head of IT

🎯 Role Definition

The Head of IT is a senior leader responsible for defining and executing the organization's technology strategy, ensuring secure and resilient IT operations, and aligning IT delivery with business goals. This role oversees infrastructure, cloud, security, service delivery, project delivery, vendor ecosystems, and IT governance while driving digital transformation, cost optimization, and high-performing teams. Key focus areas include enterprise architecture, cybersecurity and compliance (GDPR, SOC 2, ISO), cloud adoption (AWS/Azure/GCP), business continuity, and stakeholder engagement.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

IT Manager / Senior IT Manager
Head of Infrastructure / Infrastructure Manager
Director of IT / Senior Systems Architect

Advancement To:

Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
VP of IT or VP of Technology & Operations

Lateral Moves:

Head of Security / CISO (for security-focused leaders)
Director of Cloud Engineering
Head of Digital Transformation

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Define, communicate and execute a multi-year IT strategy and roadmap that supports business objectives, growth targets, and digital transformation initiatives, including clear KPIs and quarterly milestones.
Own end-to-end IT governance, policy creation, and compliance programs (GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS), ensuring audits, policy reviews and remediation plans are delivered on schedule.
Lead the architecture, deployment and operations of hybrid cloud and on-premise infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), optimizing for scalability, performance and cost-efficiency across compute, storage, networking, and containers.
Manage cybersecurity strategy and operations including SIEM, endpoint protection, identity and access management (IAM), multi-factor authentication (MFA), vulnerability management and incident response playbooks to maintain enterprise security posture.
Establish and run a 24x7 service delivery model with service level agreements (SLAs), incident management, change management, problem management and continuous service improvement to ensure availability and reliability targets (e.g., 99.9%+ uptime).
Own IT budgeting, forecasting and P&L for technology spend; deliver cost optimization, license management and ROI analysis while managing a multi-million-dollar IT budget and capital expenditure (CapEx) plans.
Build, mentor and scale high-performing IT teams across infrastructure, cloud, security, service desk, and network engineering; define organizational structure, hiring plans, career ladders and performance metrics.
Partner with business stakeholders and product leaders to prioritize IT investments, translate business requirements into technical solutions and ensure on-time delivery of critical projects and strategic initiatives.
Lead enterprise architecture and solution design, set standards for software, middleware and infrastructure, and oversee technology selection and proof-of-concept evaluation to reduce technical debt and ensure interoperability.
Manage vendor and partner relationships, negotiate enterprise contracts and SLAs with cloud providers, MSPs, SaaS vendors and integrators; ensure vendor performance and cost-effectiveness.
Drive IT modernization programs including consolidation of legacy systems, migration to cloud-native platforms, adoption of DevOps/CI/CD practices and automation to accelerate time-to-market and reduce operational overhead.
Define and implement disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plans (BCP), conduct regular DR exercises, validate RTO/RPO objectives, and ensure recoverability across critical systems and services.
Oversee endpoint management, identity lifecycle, device provisioning, mobile device management (MDM) and secure remote access strategies to support hybrid work models and secure BYOD policies.
Ensure data governance, backup and retention policies, and data protection measures are in place across databases, data lakes and reporting platforms; collaborate with privacy and legal teams on data residency and compliance requirements.
Drive security awareness, training and phishing simulation programs to improve organizational security culture and reduce human risk vectors.
Implement observability and monitoring frameworks (APM, logging, metrics) for infrastructure and application health, enabling proactive issue detection, capacity planning and performance tuning.
Lead cross-functional technology projects (ERP, CRM, core platform migrations) using formal project management disciplines (Agile or Waterfall as appropriate) and ensure successful go-lives with clear rollback plans.
Define and report IT performance metrics and board-level dashboards including uptime, mean-time-to-repair (MTTR), cost-per-user, project delivery velocity and security KPIs to the executive team.
Ensure secure software development lifecycles (SDLC) and integrate security testing (SAST/DAST) and code quality gates into delivery pipelines to reduce production incidents and vulnerabilities.
Champion innovation by evaluating emerging technologies (AI/ML, RPA, serverless, edge computing) and recommending pilots that could deliver strategic differentiation or operational efficiency.
Lead mergers, acquisitions and carve-out IT integration planning: assess technology risks, define integration plans, and execute consolidation of infrastructure, applications and security controls.
Oversee network architecture, WAN/LAN design, load balancing and capacity planning to support scaling business needs and high-performance connectivity across offices and cloud regions.
Ensure compliance with internal controls and support external audits (SOX, ISO) by providing evidence, remediation plans and timely responses to audit findings.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Provide mentorship to mid-level IT managers and participate in leadership hiring and succession planning.
Contribute to procurement strategy and assist legal in vendor contract reviews focused on technical and security terms.
Provide technical review and sign-off for major vendor proposals, RFPs and technology proof-of-concepts.
Represent IT at executive steering committees, board meetings and cross-functional governance forums to align technology initiatives with corporate strategy.
Support internal communications for major IT changes, planned outages, maintenance windows and post-incident reviews.
Maintain an up-to-date IT risk register and collaborate with internal audit and risk functions to reduce technology risk exposure.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

IT Strategy & Roadmapping — ability to craft and execute multi-year technology plans tied to business outcomes.
Cloud Platforms — hands-on experience with AWS, Microsoft Azure and/or Google Cloud Platform and cloud cost optimization techniques.
Cybersecurity & Compliance — knowledge of SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI-DSS, SIEM, vulnerability management, incident response and security operations.
Enterprise Architecture — experience with solution design, microservices, API management, middleware and integration patterns.
Infrastructure & Networking — strong knowledge of virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V), storage, SAN/NAS, SD-WAN and enterprise routing/switching.
Identity & Access Management — SSO, MFA, role-based access control (RBAC), IAM platforms (Okta, Azure AD).
DevOps & Automation — CI/CD pipelines, configuration management (Ansible, Terraform), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
Service Management — ITIL-aligned processes, service desk tooling, SLA/OLA design and incident/change/problem management.
Business Continuity & DR — backup technologies, replication, recovery procedures and RTO/RPO planning.
Observability & Monitoring — APM, logging and metrics platforms (Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus).
Project & Program Management — PMP or Agile experience managing large cross-functional projects and vendor deliveries.
SaaS & ERP Platforms — practical experience managing SaaS platforms, CRM/ERP implementations (Salesforce, SAP, Oracle).
Endpoint & Mobile Management — MDM/EMM, endpoint security and patch management strategies.
Database & Data Protection — RDBMS/NoSQL fundamentals, backup strategies and encryption practices.
Network Security & Firewalling — design and operation of firewalls, VPNs, IDS/IPS and WAFs.

Soft Skills

Strategic leadership and executive presence with ability to influence C-suite and board-level stakeholders.
Excellent written and verbal communication for technical and non-technical audiences.
Strong stakeholder management and business partnering skills.
Change management and organizational transformation experience.
Decision-making under uncertainty with a data-driven mindset.
Budgeting and vendor negotiation prowess with focus on cost efficiency.
Talent development, coaching and recruitment of technical teams.
Problem solving, critical thinking and prioritization in complex environments.
Customer-focused mindset with an emphasis on service quality and SLAs.
Resilience, adaptability and a growth-oriented learning approach.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Business Administration or a related technical field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree (MSc in Computer Science, Information Systems, or MBA) or relevant executive education/certifications (CISSP, CISM, ITIL, PMP).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Systems / IT Management
Cybersecurity / Information Assurance
Business Administration / Management Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 10–20+ years in IT with progressive leadership responsibility.

Preferred: 12+ years of hands-on technology experience including at least 5–8 years in senior management leading cross-functional IT teams, driving cloud migrations, cybersecurity programs, vendor negotiations, and delivering enterprise-scale projects.