About the role
We're proud to be recognized as a Great Place to Work, a testament to our inclusive culture, strong leadership, and commitment to employee well-being and growth. At Tarento, you’ll be part of a collaborative environment where ideas are valued, learning is continuous, and careers are built on passion and purpose.
Job Description – IT Operations / IT Manager
Location: Bangalore| Experience: 10+ years |Team: 5–8 IT professionals | User base: ~500-person IT organization
About the RoleWe are seeking a highly experienced and proactive IT Operations Lead / IT Manager to lead and optimize the technology environment supporting a 500-person IT organization. The role combines strategic IT leadership with hands-on operational ownership across infrastructure, IT service management, end-user computing, cloud, DevOps, cybersecurity, compliance, vendor management, automation, and technology governance. The successful candidate will lead a team of 5–8 IT professionals, ensure stable and secure day-to-day operations, and drive continuous improvement, automation, cost optimization, and exceptional service delivery.
1. IT Operations, Service Management & Service Delivery
- Lead day-to-day IT operations, ensuring availability, performance, reliability, resilience, and security of infrastructure, systems, applications, networks, cloud services, and end-user technology.
- Own IT Service Management processes covering Incident, Problem, Change, Request, and Service Management through the IT ticketing platform.
- Establish, govern, and continuously improve SLAs, KPIs, ticket ageing, response/resolution targets, and user satisfaction.
- Act as the escalation point for critical and major incidents; coordinate troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and post-incident reviews.
- Drive continuous service improvement aligned with ITIL best practices and business priorities.
- Develop monthly SLA and operational reports covering Internet uptime, service uptime, ticket volumes, ageing, resolution performance, and recurring issues.
- Maintain a strong customer-service culture and provide empathetic, professional support to internal users.
- Lead, mentor, coach, and develop a team of 5–8 IT support and infrastructure professionals.
- Assign work, establish priorities, monitor performance, manage escalations, and ensure timely resolution of IT issues.
- Define objectives, KPIs, development plans, knowledge-sharing practices, and operational ownership across the team.
- Foster a collaborative, supportive, accountable, and continuous-improvement-oriented culture.
- Coordinate cross-functional teams during major incidents, audits, projects, technology changes, and transformation initiatives.
- Oversee enterprise infrastructure including networks, servers, storage, virtualization, wireless, firewalls, cloud environments, and end-user devices.
- Ensure high availability and reliability of critical IT systems and services.
- Manage wireless access points, hardware firewalls, switches, network equipment, Internet circuits, and associated vendor services.
- Manage the complete lifecycle of laptops, desktops, mobiles, peripherals, and accessories from procurement and provisioning through refresh and secure disposal.
- Own user onboarding, role changes, access provisioning, offboarding, asset recovery, and access-card coordination with HR.
- Perform monthly Internet bandwidth and capacity checks and recommend upgrades based on usage and business demand.
- Maintain disk-capacity and infrastructure-health reports and proactively address capacity risks.
- Manage and optimize cloud resources across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), where applicable.
- Support cloud services and customer-facing workloads hosted on AWS, Azure, and GCP.
- Monitor availability, performance, capacity, security, and operational health of cloud resources.
- Track monthly cloud bills, analyze consumption trends, forecast spend, and drive FinOps-style cost optimization.
- Define cloud adoption standards and ensure appropriate governance, tagging, access controls, backup, and lifecycle management.
- Balance on-premises and cloud workloads to optimize performance, scalability, resilience, and total cost of ownership.
- Manage Microsoft 365/O365 licenses and project-specific software licenses, including allocation, renewal, usage, and cost optimization.
- Oversee software deployment, application inventory, endpoint configuration, and patch management using tools such as ManageEngine Desktop Central/Endpoint Central.
- Implement and govern automated OS patching for employee workstations and servers.
- Maintain accurate software and hardware inventories and ensure appropriate licensing compliance.
- Track software renewals, support contracts, certificates, and technology lifecycle milestones.
- Provide operational leadership and governance for DevOps tooling and practices.
- Manage and support Git, GitLab, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and Azure DevOps environments as applicable.
- Perform periodic Git/GitLab access reviews and ensure least-privilege access and appropriate segregation of duties.
- Support CI/CD pipelines, automation, deployment reliability, and operational stability in collaboration with development and DevOps teams.
- Lead infrastructure-as-code and configuration-management practices using Terraform and Ansible where applicable.
- Support containerization and orchestration platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes.
- Define and implement IT security policies, standards, procedures, and operational controls.
- Act as the IT/security escalation point and support enterprise security governance and risk management.
- Conduct vulnerability checks and coordinate remediation of identified vulnerabilities.
- Manage endpoint protection and antivirus/EDR platforms such as Cortex and ensure security agents remain healthy and current.
- Oversee identity and access management, privileged access, access reviews, endpoint security, network security, and incident response.
- Maintain the Information Security Management System (ISMS) and support ISO 27001 certification and audit requirements.
- Participate in quarterly audits, evidence collection, remediation tracking, and management reviews.
- Coordinate cybersecurity incidents, containment, investigation, recovery, and lessons learned.
- Define and govern enterprise IT architecture standards, technology reference models, and infrastructure principles.
- Establish vendor evaluation frameworks and technology selection criteria.
- Define cloud adoption policies, technology lifecycle standards, and application rationalization roadmaps aligned with business strategy.
- Partner with C-suite and executive leadership to translate business objectives into technology roadmaps and investment priorities.
- Present IT performance metrics, risk posture, cybersecurity status, governance outcomes, and strategic initiatives to senior leadership.
- Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI, automation, AIOps, and cloud platforms, and assess their operational and business value.
- Lead adoption of AIOps capabilities such as ML-based event correlation, anomaly detection, predictive monitoring, and automated first-line remediation.
- Drive AI-powered ITSM capabilities including intelligent ticket classification, AI-driven routing, NLP-based resolution recommendations, and predictive SLA-breach alerts.
- Identify opportunities to automate repetitive IT operations, support processes, monitoring, reporting, and remediation activities.
- Architect and manage infrastructure for AI workloads, including on-premises GPU platforms and cost-optimized cloud AI services where appropriate.
- Measure operational improvements from AI and automation initiatives, including reduced downtime, faster MTTR, and lower operating cost.
- Plan and execute quarterly firmware upgrades for wireless access points and network equipment.
- Implement and maintain automated OS patching and upgrade cycles for end-user systems and servers.
- Perform planned server OS upgrades and maintain application/platform upgrade schedules.
- Perform quarterly GitLab version upgrades with appropriate validation, backup, rollback, and change-management controls.
- Maintain backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and infrastructure resilience plans for critical services.
- Use monitoring and capacity data to identify and resolve issues before they impact users or customers.
- Develop and maintain monthly IT dashboards covering service uptime, Internet uptime, network bandwidth, patch compliance, license renewals, ticket performance, disk usage, cloud spend, and security posture.
- Produce monthly SLA and KPI reports for leadership and relevant stakeholders.
- Maintain operational dashboards and trend analysis to identify recurring incidents, capacity risks, cost anomalies, and improvement opportunities.
- Maintain accurate IT documentation, asset records, service ownership information, escalation matrices, and operational runbooks.
- Maintain and share access-card server details with HR in accordance with access governance procedures.
- Own procurement of IT hardware, software, licenses, accessories, network equipment, and technology services.
- Manage vendor, MSP, telecom, cloud, and technology-partner relationships.
- Define and monitor vendor SLAs, KPIs, contracts, renewals, service quality, and operational performance.
- Lead vendor evaluations, commercial negotiations, renewals, and corrective actions in collaboration with procurement and leadership.
- Ensure third-party services meet requirements for availability, security, compliance, performance, and cost.
- Own IT CapEx and OpEx planning, forecasting, budget tracking, and financial reporting.
- Manage cloud spend forecasting and optimization across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
- Optimize software licensing, infrastructure, telecom, support, and vendor costs without compromising service quality or security.
- Present technology investment proposals and cost-benefit analysis to leadership.
- Participate in client calls and technical discussions as required.
- Provide service status, operational updates, logs, evidence, and technical information to clients in coordination with relevant teams.
- Translate technical issues into clear business impact, resolution status, risk, and next steps for non-technical stakeholders.
- Build strong relationships with business leaders, customers, vendors, and internal technology teams.
- ITIL 4 certification.
- ISO 27001 Lead Implementer or Lead Auditor; CISSP or CISM is advantageous.
- AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud certifications.
- CompTIA or other infrastructure/security certifications.
- TOGAF or equivalent enterprise architecture certification.
- PMP/PRINCE2 or equivalent project-management certification.
- Terraform, Kubernetes, or DevOps-related certifications.
- IT Operations Leadership
- Infrastructure & Network Management
- Cloud & FinOps
- IT Service Management & ITIL
- Cybersecurity & Compliance
- DevOps & Automation
- AI/AIOps & Intelligent IT Operations
- Enterprise Architecture & Technology Strategy
- Vendor & Contract Management
- Budget & Cost Management
- Problem-Solving & Incident Management
- Customer Service & Empathy
- Executive Communication & Stakeholder Management
- Proactive Approach & Continuous Improvement
- Team Leadership & People Development
- IT infrastructure and service availability / uptime.
- SLA compliance, ticket resolution time, backlog, and user satisfaction.
- Major incident frequency, MTTR, recurrence, and root-cause closure.
- Patch compliance and vulnerability remediation performance.
- Cloud spend against budget and measurable cost optimization.
- Software/license compliance and renewal management.
- Vendor/MSP performance against contractual SLAs.
- Audit findings, security compliance, and ISO 27001/ISMS performance.
- Change success rate and change-related incidents.
- Automation/AIOps adoption and measurable reduction in downtime and operational effort.
- Successful delivery of infrastructure upgrades, lifecycle activities, and technology roadmaps.