Riverlane - Head of IT

• Corporate IT • Own and evolve the company-wide IT strategy, policies, and roadmap, ensuring alignment with Riverlane's growth trajectory and security requirements. • Manage and continuously improve all corporate IT systems, including endpoint management, identity and access management (IAM), collaboration tools, SaaS platforms, and networking. • Lead IT procurement, vendor management, and licence optimisation across all tools and platforms. • Ensure robust IT support processes are in place, maintaining high availability and responsiveness for a technically demanding workforce of scientists and engineers. • Own and develop Riverlane's information security posture, including policies, risk management, access controls, and compliance with relevant standards (e.g. ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials). • Lead the IT aspects of any audits, due diligence processes, or regulatory requirements. • Manage and mentor any IT support staff, building out the team as the company grows. • HPC DevOps Infrastructure • Take ownership of Riverlane's on-premises high-performance computer, serving as the primary technical authority for its architecture, performance, reliability, and availability. • Lead the DevOps strategy for the HPC environment, including CI/CD pipelines, containerisation, workload scheduling (e.g. Slurm, Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code practices. • Collaborate closely with quantum scientists and hardware engineers to understand their compute requirements and translate them into robust, scalable infrastructure solutions. • Learn to ensure the HPC environment is optimised for the unique demands of quantum error correction research and development • Define and enforce best practices around HPC system security, backup, disaster recovery, and capacity planning. • Evaluate and integrate new technologies to extend the HPC capability as Riverlane's research scales toward MegaQuOp and beyond. • Act as the bridge between the engineering/science teams and the IT function, translating complex research infrastructure requirements into well-managed, reliable systems. • Essential • Proven experience in a senior IT leadership role, ideally within a technology-driven, engineering or research-intensive organisation. • Strong hands-on technical background in Linux systems administration, networking, and cloud/on-prem infrastructure. • Demonstrable experience managing or supporting HPC environments, including job scheduling systems, storage architectures (e.g. GPFS, Lustre, NFS), and cluster management. • Experience owning DevOps tooling and practices: CI/CD, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible), and version control systems. • Solid understanding of information security principles and experience implementing or managing security frameworks. • Excellent stakeholder management skills — comfortable engaging with scientists, engineers, executives, and external vendors alike. • A proactive, ownership-oriented mindset with the ability to both set strategy and roll up your sleeves. • Desirable • Experience working in a quantum computing, semiconductor, HPC centre, or national laboratory environment. • Familiarity with FPGA-based systems or real-time processing infrastructure. • Experience scaling IT operations in a high-growth startup or scaleup. • Knowledge of relevant compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, NIST, Cyber Essentials Plus). • Experience with GPU cluster management or similar specialist compute environments.