Head of IT
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About Alpine Group
Alpine Group (including Alpine Fire Engineers and DAS Fire) is a fast growing, award winning, leader in fire detection and suppression systems — designing, delivering and maintaining complex solutions across logistics & distribution, aerospace, automotive, pharmaceuticals, high hazard and other specialist environments.
We’re proud to be recognised among The Sunday Times Best Places to Work (2025), reflecting our focus on wellbeing, values and a high performance, people first culture.
Location: Bury (Greater Manchester) as the primary base, with occasional travel to other UK sites.
Updated Job Description – Head of IT
The Opportunity
As we scale, we are strengthening our in-house IT capability. This role will take responsibility not only for defining and delivering our IT roadmap, but for orchestrating technology change across the organisation — ensuring that systems, data, governance and user adoption evolve in a structured, disciplined and business-aligned way.
This is not simply an operational IT role. It is a transformation leadership position.
You will ensure that technology initiatives are:
- Properly prioritised
- Clearly scoped
- Well-governed
- Communicated effectively
- Adopted successfully
- Measured for value realisation
You’ll manage day-to-day IT operations (largely delivered by partners), oversee vendors, work with internal stakeholders to prioritise change, and embed disciplined change governance across infrastructure, applications, security and collaboration platforms.
This is a hands-on, delivery-focused leadership role with direct visibility to the executive team.
Core Responsibilities
1. Technology Strategy & Portfolio Orchestration
Own and deliver a multi-year IT roadmap aligned to growth, M&A integration and geographic expansion.
Translate business objectives into prioritised, sequenced IT initiatives with clear ownership, milestones, risk management and measurable outcomes.
Establish a structured change portfolio governance framework, including:
- Clear intake and prioritisation process
- Defined change approval thresholds
- Risk and impact assessment
- Executive reporting
- Benefits tracking
Ensure change is not reactive or fragmented, but strategically sequenced and coordinated.
2. IT Operations & Service Excellence
Ensure IT services run smoothly and meet agreed SLAs.
Work closely with the IT & NetSuite Support Manager and external partners to maintain:
- Uptime
- Connectivity
- Device lifecycle management
- User support responsiveness
- Clear service standards
Drive continuous improvement in service quality and colleague experience.
3. Change Management & Adoption Leadership
Lead the orchestration of technology change across the Group.
Establish consistent approaches to:
- Change impact assessment
- Stakeholder mapping
- Communication planning
- Training design
- Adoption tracking
- Post-implementation review
Ensure new systems (e.g. Microsoft 365 enhancements, ERP upgrades, collaboration tools, security controls) are not just deployed — but embedded.
Create repeatable change playbooks for:
- M&A integrations
- System rollouts
- Platform upgrades
- Security enhancements
Champion digital confidence and structured adoption across operational and site-based teams.
4. Security, Risk & Governance
Lead our security posture and embed “secure by design” principles across identity, devices, data and SaaS.
Formalise and govern:
- Change control
- Incident response
- Disaster recovery
- Supplier assurance
- Access management
- SaaS sprawl control
Introduce governance mechanisms that prevent uncontrolled system proliferation and duplication.
5. Applications & Data Enablement
Partner with Finance and Operations to enhance NetSuite and adjacent SaaS platforms.
Oversee integration, automation and reporting initiatives with disciplined governance.
Ensure data integrity and consistency across systems to support decision-making and AI readiness.
6. Microsoft 365 & Digital Workplace Maturity
Drive structured maturation of our Microsoft 365 environment, including:
- Clear ownership of SharePoint, Teams, Viva and Entra
- Governance of site and workspace creation
- Role-based permissions and lifecycle management
- Information architecture discipline
- Adoption metrics and usage analytics
Prevent duplication, sprawl and uncontrolled workspace growth.
7. Budgeting & Value Management
Build and manage the IT budget (opex/capex).
Ensure investment cases are supported by:
- Clear business rationale
- Risk analysis
- Defined benefits
- Post-implementation value tracking
Continuously optimise cost-to-serve, licensing and operational efficiency.
8. Leadership
Line manage and grow the internal IT team.
Set clear standards for:
- Delivery discipline
- Change governance
- Stakeholder communication
- Risk management
Foster a high-trust, high-accountability culture.
What You’ll Bring
Essential
Experience leading IT in a multi-site engineering, industrial or project-led environment.
Proven track record delivering structured technology change — not just operational support.
Experience establishing formal change governance, prioritisation frameworks and stakeholder management processes.
Strong hands-on knowledge across:
- Microsoft 365 / Entra / Intune / Defender
- Identity & access governance
- Enterprise networking
- Endpoint security
- Device lifecycle
- Backup & DR
Experience with ERP (NetSuite preferred) and SaaS ecosystem management.
Ability to translate technical initiatives into clear business value and risk language.
Strong executive presence and Board-level communication capability.
Highly Desirable
Experience leading IT through:
- Business growth
- Acquisition integration
- Organisational restructuring
Formal change management exposure (PROSCI, ITIL Change, PRINCE2, Agile or similar).
Experience implementing governance frameworks for Microsoft 365 and SaaS control.
Why This Role Matters
Alpine is entering a period of accelerated growth and integration. Technology must be:
- Structured
- Governed
- Secure
- Scalable
- Adopted effectively
- This role ensures that change is orchestrated deliberately — not reactively — and that our technology estate becomes a strategic enabler rather than a source of fragmentation.