Head of IT Operations

At Xero, we’re here to make running a business beautiful. By making small businesses more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small businesses, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

This role is fundamental to the success of Xero as it leads and grows the team that provides IT support services that ensures the smooth day to day operations across Xero.

As Xero continues to grow and scale globally, this role makes an impact by growing and evolving the IT support services to match the increasing demand and requirements this brings in a cost efficient manner. You will ensure that our internal customers receive exceptional technical support and have the tools they need to be productive and successful.

You will bring industry ITSM and technology thought leadership to challenge and innovate how we manage our IT support, drive operational efficiencies, and uplift our tooling and skills across the support team globally.

You will work closely with various business stakeholders to continually enhance the business value delivered by the IT Support team, ensuring alignment with Xero’s strategic goals.

What you'll do...

• Scale Xero’s internal IT support to a global support function, ensuring we have the right team in the right location with the relevant ITSM, support processes and capabilities to ensure all our Xero’s are supported no matter where they work.
• Grow and develop your team and ensure succession and attrition plans in place, new Xero’s are quickly grown into productive members of the team and that each member of your team has a development plan in place, so they can grow and advance their careers.
• Ensure we have the appropriate tooling and processes to ensure we optimise for a self service, auto resolution method of ticket resolution.
• Define, implement and measure service level obligations for IT support in Xero and use data driven metrics to inform decisions and opportunities for improvement.
• Manage the Internal IT budget, including forecasting people and system costs and opportunities for capital investment to improve the way we work.
• Working with the Service Delivery Team to create a consistent level of reporting for the IT Support team, that can be reported up to management with clear recommendations on improvement areas.
• Work closely with the Head of Enterprise Systems on the pipeline of work between the two teams, to ensure that work is being completed in a prioritised manner with limited/no bottlenecks.
• Input into the People Systems strategy, leadership and operational initiatives.
• Cultivate a fun, rewarding, agile and results-driven culture that lives and breathes our Xero values, with a focus on customer service and delivery both within the immediate team and wider People Systems Team.
• Proactively understand and manage risks as they relate to your role.
• Proactively understand and manage compliance and regulatory obligations for your areas of responsibility.

Experience you'll bring with you...

• 5+ years operational experience of running a >4000 seat IT operations / service desk enterprise over a global geographically dispersed environment.
• 5+ years managing operational budgets in excess of ~$10M NZD.
• 5+ years leading more than 30+ staff.
• Demonstrated experience in creating operational metric reporting & insights.
• Demonstrated experience in defining roadmaps and long term planning.
• Demonstrated experience in creating reporting for the executive leader level.
• Knowledge in Okta, Google, Microsoft, Ticketing Systems ie: Zendesk.
• Proven experience collaborating and building trust and effective working relationships, with stakeholders across all levels of the business..
• Proven ability to influence outcomes at a range of levels from individual contributor to executive leader level.

If you are a technical savvy individual who loves building and leading high performing teams, has a curious mind and thrives in a fast paced global environment we would love to hear from you. In return you get to work in a culture that celebrates who you are, provides career growth and development as well as some amazing company benefits.