Global IT Lead - Infrastructure, Network & Cloud

Purpose and Mission

• The Global IT Lead – Infrastructure, Network & Cloud is accountable for the design, stability, security, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of the company’s global IT infrastructure landscape.
• This role leads the end-to-end strategy and operations of on-premises infrastructure, global and local networks, cloud platforms, and end-user devices, enabling business growth, digital transformation, and operational resilience across all regions.
• The role combines strategic leadership, hands-on technical depth, and strong stakeholder management in a highly complex, multinational environment.

Key Activities and Responsibilities

Strategy & Architecture

• Define and own the global infrastructure, network, and cloud strategy, aligned with business objectives and enterprise architecture.
• Ensure scalability, resilience, and performance for critical global systems.
• Drive infrastructure standardization while balancing regional requirements.

Operations & Service Excellence

• Ensure 24/7 availability, performance, and reliability of global infrastructure and network services.
• Own operational KPIs including uptime, incident response, capacity, cost efficiency, and service quality.
• Lead local data centers, cloud platforms, networks (LAN/WAN/Wi-Fi), identity, compute, storage, and virtualization.
• Oversee disaster recovery, business continuity, and high-availability architectures.
• Lead the infrastructure support for regional and local business projects—such as plant expansions, office relocations, and lifecycle initiatives—through strong collaboration with Regional Service Managers and other key stakeholders

Cloud & Platform Leadership

• Govern public, private, and hybrid cloud environments (Azure, AliCloud, …).
• Drive cloud cost optimization, performance tuning, and secure platform usage.
• Establish cloud governance, landing zones, and best practices across regions.

Security, Risk & Compliance

• Partner with Cybersecurity to embed security-by-design across infrastructure and cloud platforms.
• Ensure compliance with global regulations (e.g., ISO, SOC, GDPR, regional data residency).
• Manage infrastructure-related risk, vulnerability remediation, and audit readiness.

Leadership & Organization 

• Lead and develop global, multicultural teams across regions and time zones.
• Build a strong leadership bench and succession plans.
• Foster a culture of accountability, automation, continuous improvement, and operational excellence.

Vendor & Financial Management

• Own strategic relationships with global vendors and service providers.
• Negotiate contracts, SLAs, and commercial models to optimize cost and performance.
• Manage global infrastructure and cloud budgets, including CapEx and OpEx.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior business and IT leadership.
• Translate complex technical topics into clear business outcomes.
• Partner with Application, Data, Security, and Business teams to enable transformation initiatives.

Skills

Professional Experience

• 10+ years of progressive IT experience, with significant leadership responsibility in infrastructure, network, and cloud.
• Proven experience operating large-scale, global IT environments in a multinational organization.
• Strong background in hybrid and cloud architectures, enterprise networking, and infrastructure operations.
• Demonstrated success leading complex transformations (cloud migration, data centre modernization, network redesign).
• Experience operating in an IT infrastructure organization that relies extensively on outsourced services, with a proven track record of managing and coordinating IT managed service providers

Technical Expertise

• Enterprise infrastructure (compute, storage, virtualization, containers).
• Global networking (WAN, SD-WAN, LAN, Wi-Fi, VPN, DNS, load balancing).
• Cloud platforms (Azure, Alicloud, ..) and hybrid architectures.
• Infrastructure management tooling based on Microsoft stack.
• Automation, Infrastructure-as-Code, monitoring, and reliability engineering.
• Disaster recovery, high availability, and resilience engineering.

Leadership & Business Skills

• Executive-level leadership presence and decision-making capability.
• Strong financial acumen (budgeting, cost optimization, vendor negotiations).
• Excellent communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to operate effectively in a matrixed, global organization.

Key Competencies

• Strategic thinking with strong execution discipline
• Global mindset and cultural sensitivity
• Resilience, pragmatism, and accountability
• Ability to simplify complexity
• Strong people leadership and talent development

Qualifications and Education

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
• Relevant certifications (e.g., cloud architecture, IT service management) are a plus.