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Salary: GBP 90,000 - 90,000 / annual
Zen Educate is seeking an IT Operations & Security Lead to own and scale the company's internal IT systems and security infrastructure as it grows from 600+ employees across the UK and US. You will report directly to the CTO and be the first dedicated hire to consolidate IT and security responsibilities currently spread across multiple roles.
The role focuses on building scalable, automated systems rather than managing ticket queues. Key responsibilities include:
**Identity & Access Management**: Own Google Workspace, SSO, MFA, groups, permissions and least-privilege principles. Build workflows that automate access provisioning as people join, move, and leave the organization.
**SaaS Governance & Sprawl**: Create a definitive inventory of all software and services (what's used, who owns it, access levels, costs, renewal dates). Work with teams and vendors to improve purchasing, renewal, and retirement processes.
**Security & Compliance**: Define and maintain IT and security policies, translate them into working processes and technical controls, manage access reviews, vulnerability management, external testing, and incident response. Build reusable trust processes for security questionnaires, audit evidence, and certifications like Cyber Essentials.
**Device Management**: Establish proportionate security approaches for personal and company-owned devices. Ensure devices are secure, patched, encrypted, and accounted for across locations. Manage endpoint provisioning and retirement remotely.
**Incident Response**: Extend the company's established product incident process to corporate IT and security. Ensure clear ownership, communication, recorded decisions, and root-cause fixes.
You will work closely with the Foundations Lead and Engineering on company-wide security initiatives, collaborate with the People Team on employee lifecycle systems, and partner with a peer in Business Systems on overlapping infrastructure challenges.
The company values building systems over managing queues, using proven tools for obvious problems while experimenting where needed, and security that enables rather than restricts the business. You'll be a visible, approachable leader who brings energy to IT and security, builds organizational confidence, and follows problems through to resolution.
**Requirements**:
- Proven experience scaling IT and security operations as a company grew from several hundred to much larger (ideally 2nd or 3rd person in an IT/Corporate IT/Security Operations team)
- Real hands-on depth in identity and access management, endpoint management, and automation
- Working knowledge of SaaS governance, vendor and license management, audits and certifications, incident response, and data protection
- Understanding of security principles and why controls work, not just tool-specific knowledge
- Business mindset: ability to apply security proportionally to company stage and distinguish meaningful risks from theoretical ones
- Strong communication skills to work effectively across all business levels, especially non-technical teams
- Experience taking manual, messy, or poorly defined processes and making them scalable
- Comfort with remote work and async communication across multiple time zones (UK, US, Canada)
