Company description:

Valenture Institute partners with the world’s leading education institutions to transform physical limitations into digital opportunities. We create new opportunities for students to choose an aspirational online learning experience by offering fully-supported online high school programmes.

As a social enterprise, Valenture Institute is also committed to levelling the playing field and increasing access for all students through free curriculum offerings, extensive scholarship programs and blended learning micro schools in underprivileged communities.

The role:

Summary:

The IT Services Manager oversees the administration and security of Valenture Institute’s core IT systems, hardware and physical infrastructure. The role supports the evolving IT needs of a large, rapidly expanding, distributed, “remote-first” workforce, ensuring reliability, scalability, and compliance across all environments.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee the administration of core IT systems and infrastructure.
• Lead the IT Services (“Systems”) team through effective mentoring, upskilling and performance management.
• Draft, implement and maintain appropriate IT policies, procedures and documentation.
• Support the DS&T Data and Engineering teams with system configuration, integrations and troubleshooting.
• Implement and maintain robust cyber security controls, including endpoint protection, identity and access management, and data loss prevention.
• Liaise with external consultants as required to conduct regular security audits, vulnerability assessments, and penetration tests to ensure compliance with ITSM and data protection standards.
• Manage protocols, tooling and automations for employee lifecycle management (onboarding,offboarding and access management).
• Determine hardware requirements and manage device profiles for company-wide roles.
• Oversee the full device lifecycle including forecasting, budgeting, procurement, setup, distribution, asset tracking, patching, warranty, recovery, repair and decommissioning.
• Oversee the administration and optimisation of Valenture’s AWS environments.
• Identify IT-related risks and execute appropriate mitigation strategies.
• Facilitate regular organisation-wide internal IT training initiatives, such as for cyber security and AI literacy.
• Report on performance against agreed KPIs and service levels.
• Manage IT budgets, ensuring cost efficiency and optimal vendor performance..
• Oversee the delivery of responsive, high quality desktop support to employees.
• Assist with IT vendor selection, contract negotiation and SLA management.
• Forecast optimise and manage software licenses across multiple systems.
• Drive automation and integrations to streamline operations.
• Ensure compliance with relevant governance and data protection legislation (POPIA, GDPR, etc.).
• Manage DNS and SSL certificate renewals and configurations.

Requirements:

• Tertiary qualification in IT-related field (e.g. Information Systems)
• Minimum of 5 years experience managing IT teams servicing 100+ employees
• Experience administering large and complex Google Workspace configurations
• Experience with AWS administration (IAM, EC2, S3, VPC, CloudWatch) and relevant certification preferred.
• Device management experience using, e.g. Microsoft Intune, Azure AD, Autopilot or Solarwinds
• Expertise managing Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems
• Familiarity with POPI, GDPR and related data protection legislation
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Strong organisational, analytical, and problem-solving abilities.
• Strategic thinker with a customer service mindset.
  

Advantageous:

• Experience administering Google Workspace for Education
• Experience supporting a large remote-first workforce
• AWS certification(s) (e.g., Certified SysOps Administrator, Solutions Architect).
• Experience implementing ITSM frameworks such as ISO 20000 or ITIL.
• Moodle administration experience