Operations Lead📣 Job Ad

About the Role

Oivan is seeking an experienced Operations Lead to join its team in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This role is responsible for overseeing daily operations, ensuring service delivery, maintaining platform reliability, and driving continuous improvement for the Sakani and Ejar platforms. The Operations Lead will focus on guaranteeing platform availability, achieving operational excellence, managing incidents, preparing for disaster recovery, and fostering collaboration across business, development, infrastructure, security, QA, and external vendor teams. Reporting to the IT Operations Manager or Head of Technology Operations, this full-time position requires a strategic thinker with proven experience in managing complex IT environments and a strong understanding of operational governance, service reliability, and platform operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead comprehensive operational support for the Sakani and Ejar platforms, ensuring continuous availability, stability, optimal performance, and reliability.
• Oversee the management and health of production and non-production environments.
• Monitor and report on key operational performance indicators (KPIs), Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and service health metrics.
• Drive and implement initiatives for continuous service improvement across all operational aspects.
• Lead and coordinate Major Incident Management activities for swift and effective resolution of critical issues.
• Manage incident escalations across Development, Infrastructure, Database, Security, and Vendor teams.
• Conduct Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for incidents and ensure implementation of corrective and preventative actions.
• Track recurring issues and champion the development of long-term solutions to enhance platform stability.
• Oversee production deployments, releases, and scheduled maintenance activities with minimal service disruption.
• Ensure operational readiness for all major releases, including reviews of implementation and rollback plans.
• Ensure strict compliance with established change management processes and governance standards.
• Collaborate with DevOps teams to enhance automation, improve reliability, and optimize operational efficiency.
• Ensure the maintenance and enhancement of monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability capabilities.
• Provide support for Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and general platform operations.
• Drive operational excellence through strategic implementation of automation and process optimization.
• Lead Disaster Recovery (DR) planning, testing, and execution activities to ensure business continuity.
• Ensure Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) targets are consistently met during DR events.
• Maintain up-to-date operational runbooks and recovery procedures.
• Coordinate periodic DR drills and readiness assessments.
• Act as the primary operational point of contact for business and technical stakeholders.
• Coordinate with internal teams, external vendors, and service providers to ensure seamless operations.
• Prepare and present operational reports, service reviews, and executive updates.
• Facilitate operational governance and service review meetings.
• Manage vendor performance against agreed SLAs, ensuring service quality and responsiveness.
• Coordinate operational activities with third-party providers and handle escalations.
• Monitor platform performance, utilization, and capacity trends to identify potential issues and optimization opportunities.
• Identify and address performance bottlenecks.
• Plan for future capacity requirements and scalability improvements.
• Ensure compliance with organizational policies, security standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Support security audits, risk assessments, and compliance initiatives.
• Track and actively mitigate operational risks.

Qualifications and Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a closely related field.
• A minimum of 8 years of progressive experience in IT Operations, Service Delivery, Infrastructure Management, or DevOps roles.
• A minimum of 3 years of experience in a leadership or management capacity.
• Proven experience managing large-scale enterprise platforms and critical business services.
• Demonstrated experience working effectively with cross-functional teams and managing relationships with external vendors.

Required Skills

• Operations Management
• Service Delivery
• Reliability Engineering
• Continuous Improvement Methodologies
• Incident Management
• Disaster Recovery Planning and Execution
• Cross-functional Collaboration
• Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
• Release Management
• Change Management
• DevOps Principles and Practices
• Automation Strategies
• Kubernetes
• Cloud Infrastructure Management
• CI/CD Pipeline Management
• Business Continuity Planning
• Stakeholder Management
• Vendor and Service Management
• Performance Management
• Capacity Planning
• Security Best Practices
• Risk Management
• Compliance Management

Work Environment

This is a full-time position based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The role involves close collaboration with various internal teams and external vendors.