Head of IT

Head of IT is required by fast growing and highly successful travel organisation.

The Head of IT is responsible for leading the delivery and execution of the organisation’s technology and data strategy. This role is the senior operational technology leader, ensuring that IT enables operational excellence, enhances customer experience, supports long term business performance, and delivers robust, modern and secure systems.

This position provides leadership and delivery across all areas of technology including:

• Business applications (e.g. ERP, CRM, booking systems, marine fleet management)
• Digital platforms and customer facing technologies
• Data, analytics and automation, including AI
• Infrastructure, cloud services, IT operations and service management
• Cyber security and risk management
• Enterprise architecture and technology governance

They are embarking on a period of transformation, with technology central to driving service improvement and enhanced customer experience. This role will play an important part in shaping and delivering the future digital capability of the business, ensuring that technology investments align to strategic goals, technology programmes are effectively executed and innovation is embedded across the organisation. 

 Success in the role will require building strong, collaborative working relationships with stakeholders, and evolving IT into a function that enables business success.

Main duties:

• Contribute to, and lead the execution of, the organisation’s technology and data strategy, ensuring technology initiatives support operational excellence, enhanced customer experience, and long‑term business performance.

• Develop and implement an IT Operating Model that transitions from a legacy, infrastructure-focused organisation to one with strong service, application, architecture, data and digital capabilities, enabling business transformation, clearer accountability and closer alignment with business needs.

• Lead, mentor and develop the IT team, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, service excellence, and continuous improvement.

• Actively coach and develop rising talent within the IT team, particularly those with strong leadership potential, providing continuous professional development opportunities, in line with succession planning initiatives and career development plans. 

• Act as a trusted and strategic business partner to all departments, proactively identifying technology, digital and data solutions that enable their operations, unlock efficiencies and support organisational goals.

• Lead and govern the enterprise architecture, establishing clear principles, standards, design authority and decision-making processes to ensure a consistent, scalable and future-ready application, data and technology ecosystem that supports organisational goals and enables business transformation.

• Own and continuously rationalise the organisation’s application portfolio, reducing duplication, technical debt and unsupported solutions, while improving interoperability, value for money and alignment to the target architecture.

• Establish and maintain effective architecture governance across a decentralised application landscape, ensuring business-owned technology decisions align with enterprise standards for integration, security, data, resilience, supportability and lifecycle management.

• Ensure the successful end-to-end delivery of technology programmes and the technology elements of wider business transformation initiatives, applying strong governance, structured delivery methodologies and effective risk, dependency, budget and stakeholder management.

• Provide effective leadership of IT operations and end-user support services, ensuring stable, secure and high-quality services through strong service management, proactive monitoring, continuous improvement, effective supplier management and swift incident resolution.

• Lead the organisation’s cyber security strategy and operations, ensuring robust controls, strong governance, effective risk management and a proactive approach to protecting systems, data and customer information.

• Oversee the organisation’s data, integration and analytics capabilities, ensuring data is governed, accurate, accessible and secure, and that systems are effectively integrated to support decision-making, operational efficiency and customer experience.

• Build strong partnerships with business leaders to ensure technology ownership, process design, change adoption and benefit realisation are clearly defined across both centrally managed and business-owned systems.

• Define and enforce technology standards covering application selection, solution design, integration, cyber security, data management, resilience, support models and lifecycle planning, with proportionate governance to enable delivery without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

• Drive the adoption of automation and AI technologies where appropriate, identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, insight, customer experience and service reliability

Qualifications / Education required:

Bachelor's degree or higher, ideally in an Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field.

A proven IT leader, with previous experience in a similar Head of IT or IT Director role, ideally within a service focused organisation.

Professional certifications in project delivery (e.g., PMP, PRINCE2, Agile) and IT service management (e.g., ITIL) are advantageous but not essential.

Knowledge / Experience required:

Track record of leading technology transformation, including application modernisation.

Broad IT expertise, with hands‑on delivery experience across several of the following domains: enterprise architecture, business applications, infrastructure and operations, IT service management, data and analytics, cyber security, and AI/automation.

Experience at managing multi‑disciplinary IT teams and developing high‑performing, collaborative and customer focused teams.

 strategic thinking and ability to influence at all levels.

Proven experience in managing complex IT environments and driving innovation.

Excellent communication skills to translate technical concepts into business language.

Able to respond effectively to change and challenges

Able to build strong relationships across departments

Excellent training and career development opportunities exist for the right candidate.

Based Southampton (2 days per week)

Basic salary £(phone number removed) + excellent benefits