INSPIRE | EXHILARATE | DELIGHT

For over seven decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. In its pursuit to excel as a hybrid luxury retailer, the Group has curated a portfolio of over 10 owned brands and strengthened its distribution and marketing expertise for over 400 international names across luxury fashion, beauty, jewellery, watches, eyewear, and art de vivre categories.

Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken to build a future where luxury dreams become reality — bridging cultures and crafting memorable experiences for our consumers. Be it by constantly reinventing itself, committing to innovation, or embracing new technologies, the Group is shaping the future of luxury retail. It delivers seamless omnichannel experiences across more than 950 stores, online platforms, and mobile apps. Driving this innovation journey is The Greenhouse — the Group’s innovation hub, incubator, and accelerator for startups and emerging businesses, regionally and globally.

What you'll be doing

We are seeking a transformational leader and technical powerhouse to serve as our Director of Infrastructure and Networks. In this high-impact role, you will architect and drive the strategic vision, operational excellence, and innovation agenda for our global infrastructure ecosystem across a complex, multi-cloud environment — including AWS, Azure, GCP, and ideally Oracle OCI.

You will be responsible for shaping the direction of enterprise networking, cloud integration, and infrastructure services — enabling business velocity, resilience, and security at scale. We’re looking for a superstar who pairs deep technical expertise with strategic acumen, operational leadership, and a strong business mindset.

As a key member of the Corporate Technology leadership team, you will lead the planning, development, and optimization of our infrastructure and network landscape. You’ll drive the successful delivery of critical programs — from large-scale network and cloud transformations to security modernisation — ensuring high availability, performance, and compliance while managing cross-functional teams, vendor relationships, and enterprise-wide initiatives.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define and drive a modern infrastructure and network strategy aligned to business objectives and growth priorities.
• Act as the thought leader for enterprise infrastructure, continuously assessing and advancing capabilities in cloud, networking, security, and observability.
• Serve as the infrastructure SME to senior leadership, enabling strategic decision-making through data, performance insights, and risk analysis.

Enterprise Infrastructure & Multi-Cloud Management

• Architect and manage a highly available, secure, and scalable hybrid cloud environment across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI (preferred).
• Lead cloud migrations, integrations, and workload optimisation, ensuring performance, cost-efficiency, and service continuity.
• Ensure seamless orchestration of compute, storage, and networking across cloud platforms.

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

• Design and execute robust DR strategies that mitigate risks and ensure business continuity in critical environments.
• Implement backup, recovery, and high availability plans across systems and services.

Operational Excellence & Performance Engineering

• Establish and measure KPIs, SLAs, and uptime objectives to enable proactive monitoring and optimisation.

• Lead performance engineering initiatives to continuously improve infrastructure responsiveness and resilience
• Implement best practices and governance frameworks for infrastructure management, including SD-WAN, firewalls, and network security.
• Maintain detailed and up-to-date documentation of IT infrastructure, processes, and procedures for internal use and audits.
• Ensure that all infrastructure and network configurations are documented to ensure traceability and compliance with internal and external audit requirements.

Procurement and Budget Management:

• Vendor Management: Lead the selection, negotiation, and management of relationships with technology vendors to ensure the best quality, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with the organization’s needs.
• Procurement Process: Oversee the end-to-end procurement process for infrastructure and network equipment, ensuring compliance with internal policies and standards while optimizing costs.
• Budget Control: Develop and manage the IT infrastructure and network budget, ensuring all expenditures are in line with financial targets and delivering maximum value to the business.
• Cost Optimization: Regularly review and assess infrastructure costs, identifying opportunities to streamline expenditures without compromising on performance or security.
• Financial Reporting: Provide clear and concise financial reporting on infrastructure projects, highlighting any variances, cost-saving opportunities, and justifications for overspends.
• Contract Management: Manage contracts with technology suppliers and service providers, ensuring service-level agreements (SLAs) and performance expectations are met.

People Leadership & Team Development

• Inspire, mentor, and develop a high-performing infrastructure and networks team.
• Promote a culture of innovation, accountability, and technical excellence.
• Champion professional development and succession planning to future-proof the function.

Continuous Improvement and Innovation:

• Foster a culture of curiosity and critical thinking, constantly evaluating emerging technologies and approaches to enhance infrastructure capabilities.
• Proactively identify areas for improvement, streamline processes, and reduce complexity in the infrastructure landscape.
• Stay abreast of the latest industry trends, best practices, and technology innovations to drive infrastructure excellence.

Technical Expertise and Hands-On Experience:

• Demonstrated in-depth knowledge and hands-on experience in the design, implementation, and support of layered network models at the Access, Distribution/Aggregation, Core, and Datacenter locations.
• Proven experience with BGP in an enterprise environment, including turn-ups, turn downs, filters, prefix lists, route maps, AS prepending, and community attributes.
• Hands-on expertise in Layer 2 protocols, including 802.1s MST, RSTP, MC-LAG, VLANs, BPDU Filter, and Root Guard.
• In-depth knowledge and experience in Layer 3 protocols, including OSPF and VRRP.
• Expertise in MPLS, including VRFs, RVSP, LDP, VPLS, L3VPN, MP-BGP, route targets, and route designers.
• Experience in the selection, procurement, installation, and configuration of enterprise-class routers and switches, particularly Cisco (or comparable products from other vendors).
• Proven experience in the design, implementation, and support of enterprise firewalls, including security zones, policies, NAT, and DMZ.
• In-depth knowledge and hands-on experience in 802.11 wireless principles, including channel planning, AP placement, antenna selection, and interference management.
• Expertise in DNS, DHCP, NTP, RADIUS, and IPAM.
• Experience with SNMP/Syslog monitoring, preferably with Datadog or comparable products.
• Strong working knowledge of structured cabling systems, network facilities, UPS, and electrical infrastructure.
• Understanding of transport technologies, including dark fibre, DWDM, TDM, and copper/fiber.

What you’ll need to succeed

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• 15+ years of experience in infrastructure and Network support, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.
• Proven expertise in observability tools like Datadog, including building dashboards, setting up alerts, and performance monitoring.
• Strong technical background in supporting platforms like Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, MuleSoft, and cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle or similar).
• Demonstrated experience in vendor management, contract negotiations, and strategic partnerships.
• Solid understanding of infrastructure, cloud technologies, and security principles.
• Strong background in data analytics, using metrics to drive operational excellence.
• ITIL certification or equivalent knowledge of service management best practices is preferred.
• Experience in retail is an advantage.
• Managing a business with high volumes and transactions where uptime is crucial and performance is critical.

What we can offer you  

With us, you will turn your aspirations into reality.  We will help shape your journey through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers diverse career paths for those who are extraordinary, every day.  

We recognise the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies as well as exclusive employee discounts.  

We Invite All Applicants to Apply

It Takes Diversity Of Thought, Culture, Background, Differing Abilities and Perspectives to truly Inspire, Exhilarate and Delight our customers. At Chalhoub Group, we are committed to inclusion and diversity.

We welcome all applicants to apply and be part of our exciting future. We ensure equal opportunity for all our applicants without regard to gender, age, race, religion, national origin or disability status.