Head of Service Operations

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Egypt.

📋 Description

• Oversee Level 1 Support, Hosting Support, and Infrastructure Management teams, while developing and maintaining Level 2 expertise.

• Expand the Level 1 team and collaborate with current product support specialists.

• Recruit, nurture, train, and cross-skill team members across various products and platforms.

• Establish objectives, deliver feedback, and foster customer-centric ownership.

• Engage with the COO’s leadership team and contribute to decisions related to engineering, delivery, and operations.

• Act as a deputy for the COO on operational issues and take on broader operational responsibilities as the function evolves.

• Manage the Service Operations budget, covering hosting and infrastructure expenses.

• Oversee key operational suppliers and contractual agreements.

• Design and implement a 24/7 Service Operations function with appropriate coverage, scheduling, and on-call protocols.

• Create sustainable out-of-hours operational models.

• Standardize processes for intake, triage, severity, and prioritization across all products.

• Execute ITIL-aligned incident, problem, and change management, along with knowledge-centered support.

• Develop a Managed Services framework for hosted platforms, integrating Hosting Support, Infrastructure, and Client Success.

• Manage Level 1-to-Level 2/3 escalation pathways until resolution.

• Establish escalation criteria, monitor escalated issues, communicate with customers, and tackle recurring problems.

• Supervise hosted customer environments to ensure availability, monitoring, backups, patching, disaster recovery, and incident responses are in place.

• Create consistent and repeatable hosted managed services.

• Lead Infrastructure initiatives, handling hardware and deployment designs for both hosted and on-premise environments.

• Define infrastructure standards and reference architectures that encompass capacity, resilience, security, and cost considerations.

• Collaborate with product and project delivery teams to plan capacity and sizing.

• Securely maintain Azure and Kubernetes infrastructure, ensuring it is patched, documented, and cost-efficient.

• Establish Zoho Desk as the primary support platform and integrate it with other operational systems.

• Develop and sustain a knowledge base, self-service options, and automation using designated AI tools.

• Investigate AI-assisted Level 1 support, including local-language assistance and customer-answer validation.

• Define and monitor severity-based SLAs and internal service levels.

• Provide monthly reports to the COO regarding ticket trends, hosting availability, and infrastructure costs.

• Lead responses to major incidents and manage customer communications.

• Ensure processes are in place to provide evidence for ISO 27001 and SOC 2 compliance and support obligations in regulated sectors.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven experience leading support, hosting, or infrastructure operations for enterprise software clients, ideally across multiple products.

• Experience managing several teams through team leads at a senior management level.

• A demonstrated history of building or transforming a support or operations function rather than merely maintaining an existing one.

• Experience in establishing or managing a 24/7 support operation, including on-call duties and potential follow-the-sun models.

• Proficiency in managing escalations to engineering teams and ensuring adherence to agreed timelines.

• Experience in delivering SLA-based support for mission-critical customer systems.

• Experience managing an operational budget, encompassing hosting and infrastructure expenses.

• Strong foundation in incident, problem, and change management (ITIL or equivalent).

• Comprehensive knowledge of hosted and cloud infrastructure, including Azure or similar platforms, with a focus on monitoring, high availability, backup, disaster recovery, and guaranteed uptime management.

• Familiarity with containerized deployments such as Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code practices.

• Proficient with service desk platforms, reporting, and automation tools.

• Able to communicate calmly and clearly with customers and senior colleagues, especially during challenging situations.

• Utilizes data to manage performance metrics and advocate for necessary changes.

• Establishes trust across Engineering, Delivery, and Client Success, achieving results without relying solely on authority.

• Thinks beyond their own role and is comfortable representing operations at leadership and group levels.

• Fluent in Business English communication.

• Hands-on experience with Zoho Desk or a similar service desk platform.

• Experience in implementing AI-assisted support, knowledge-centered support, or self-service solutions.

• ITIL 4 certification.

• Additional language skills, particularly in French, German, or Italian.

• Experience supporting clients in regulated sectors such as financial services and insurance, along with familiarity with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 standards.

• Knowledge of cloud cost management or FinOps practices.

🏝️ Benefits

• Independent Contractor (Contractor is responsible for applicable taxes and statutory obligations, in accordance with the agreement and local law).

• Full-time position.

• Opportunity for occasional short travel.

• Compensation in USD.

• Company-provided equipment.