Senior IT Operations & Applications

Senior IT Operations & Applications – Dubai

Key Responsibilities:

• Ensure the stability, availability, and performance of digital platforms including mobile applications, websites, APIs, CRM, and ERP systems.

• Lead proactive monitoring across applications, databases, infrastructure, and network environments using enterprise monitoring solutions such as Dynatrace and ManageEngine.

• Detect potential service degradation at an early stage, implement corrective measures, and minimize business impact.

• Continuously evaluate operational health and identify architectural or solution gaps affecting long-term scalability and sustainability.

• Establish robust observability frameworks with meaningful service metrics, thresholds, and alerts aligned to business KPIs.

• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to transition operations from reactive support to predictive and proactive service management.

• Identify unstable or inefficient solutions and lead initiatives to enhance resilience, scalability, and operational efficiency.

• Promote operational excellence by leveraging incident trends, performance analytics, and lessons learned to improve services.

• Lead major incident response activities, ensuring timely containment, communication, resolution, and service restoration.

• Own end-to-end Root Cause Analysis (RCA) processes, ensuring accurate identification of root causes and contributing factors.

• Drive remediation plans through to completion and implement preventive controls to avoid recurring incidents.

• Monitor incident patterns and systemic risks, escalating critical issues and recommending long-term corrective actions.

• Act as the production governance lead for all changes, releases, and deployments to ensure production stability.

• Define and enforce governance processes around production readiness, risk validation, and change management controls.

• Oversee deployment activities to ensure minimal disruption, rollback preparedness, and uninterrupted service delivery.

• Continuously enhance release and change management practices to balance agility with operational reliability.

• Own Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies, runbooks, and recovery procedures across all B2B services.

• Ensure DR frameworks, RTOs, and RPOs align with business priorities, regulatory standards, and contractual commitments.

• Plan and execute regular DR drills, documenting outcomes, risks, and improvement opportunities.

• Embed lessons learned from DR exercises and production incidents into operational procedures and system architecture.

• Maintain DR documentation and evidence required for audits, compliance reviews, and risk management activities.

• Prepare and present regular reports on service performance, availability, incidents, and operational risks to business and management stakeholders.

• Translate technical metrics into business-focused insights and actionable recommendations.

• Ensure clear and transparent communication during incidents and service disruptions to maintain stakeholder confidence.

• Collaborate closely with digital, infrastructure, delivery, and security teams throughout the service lifecycle.

• Manage operational engagement with external technology vendors and digital service partners.

• Ensure vendor deliverables consistently meet agreed SLAs, quality benchmarks, and operational standards.

• Challenge vendors on incident root causes, remediation effectiveness, and long-term service improvements.

• Align vendor operations with organizational governance, resilience, and operational expectations.

• Lead remediation efforts for audit findings related to application operations, service availability, and operational controls.

• Coordinate with internal teams and vendors to ensure timely closure of audit observations.

• Strengthen operational processes through preventive controls to minimize recurring audit findings.

• Maintain operational documentation, runbooks, escalation procedures, and audit evidence to support compliance requirements.

• Drive adoption of innovative technologies and operational improvements to modernize service operations.

• Champion automation initiatives including Agentic AI, AIOps, and RPA to improve efficiency and reduce manual intervention.

• Assess emerging operational technologies and lead controlled implementation into production environments.

• Support the evolution of operations toward intelligent, scalable, and self-healing service models.

Requirements

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in IT Operations & Applications
• Good understanding of database systems (Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL Database)
• Good understanding of networking & firewalls (F5, Palo Alto, Fortinet, Azure Front Door, Azure Networks)
• Strong understanding of Azure cloud infrastructure (Azure IaaS, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Compute, Azure PaaS, Azure Web App, Azure AKS, Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, Azure DevOps)
• Strong understanding of digital solutions, iOS apps, Android apps, web/portal technologies, API gateways (Mulesoft, Azure API Management)
• Required Good understanding of MS Dynamics CRM and ERP