Infrastructure & Networks Manager - Job Description

Role Purpose

Own, operate and continuously improve the company's core IT infrastructure, networks and end‑user services, ensuring they remain secure, stable and compliant within a regulated pharmaceutical environment.

This is a hands‑on technical leadership role where the manager leads by example in design, build, troubleshooting and optimisation while coaching a small team and coordinating specialist partners.

Key Responsibilities

1. Hands‑On Technical Delivery

• Administer and support servers, virtualisation platforms, storage, backups, networks, firewalls, Wi-Fi and cloud services (Azure, Microsoft 365).

• Perform advanced troubleshooting for incidents and problems, owning major incidents end-to-end.

• Implement patches, upgrades, hardening and configuration changes under ITIL and GxP change control.

• Maintain monitoring, alerting, observability and capacity planning.

• Ensure high availability and performance across on-prem and cloud environments.

2. Infrastructure & Team Leadership

• Lead and mentor infrastructure and support engineers; set technical direction and priorities.

• Foster ownership, documentation, standardisation and right‑first‑time delivery.

• Coordinate with the Service Desk for escalation and knowledge transfer.

• Champion automation, infrastructure as code and modern engineering practices.

3. Service Management, Projects & Continuous Improvement

• Own SLAs, KPIs and service outcomes for infrastructure and networks.

• Review performance data and drive improvements in resilience, reliability and user experience.

• Plan and deliver infrastructure projects (network refreshes, server replacements, cloud migrations, DR tests).

• Maintain documentation, runbooks, diagrams and configuration/asset records.

• Lead root‑cause analysis and continuous improvement activities.

4. Security, Compliance & Pharma Requirements

• Implement and maintain security controls: hardening, MFA, logging, SIEM, privileged access and patching.

• Ensure infrastructure changes comply with GxP, validation, MHRA, audit and data protection requirements.

• Own and regularly test backup and disaster recovery strategies.

• Maintain appropriate risk controls and documentation for regulated environments.

5. Vendor & Cost Management

• Manage day‑to‑day supplier relationships (MSPs, carriers, hardware/software vendors).

• Review supplier performance and escalate issues as needed.

• Support budgeting, forecasting and cost optimisation for infrastructure OPEX/CAPEX.

• Evaluate new technologies and tools to improve reliability, security or cost-efficiency.

Required Experience

• 5-8+ years in infrastructure/operations roles with current hands‑on capability.

• Strong experience with Windows Server, AD/Azure AD, M365, VMware/Hyper‑V, storage, backups and networking.

• Experience leading a small team or acting as an informal technical lead.

• Experience in regulated, manufacturing, healthcare or pharma environments is highly desirable.

• Familiarity with ITIL processes and structured documentation.

Skills & Attributes

• Deep technical expertise with willingness to remain hands‑on.

• Strong troubleshooting mindset; calm under pressure.

• Clear communicator able to translate technical issues for non‑technical stakeholders.

• Organised, documentation‑driven and improvement‑focused.

• Comfortable challenging legacy systems and driving modernisation