preply - Director of IT

• 1. Strategy, vision and business enablement • Own and evolve a multi-quarter IT roadmap tied directly to Preply’s business goals, treating IT as an enabler of growth rather than a cost center. • Set the tooling strategy and standards across the organization: decide what we adopt, consolidate, and retire, and articulate why. • Operate fluidly across altitudes: set direction with leadership one moment, and make sharp technical calls the next. • Plan ahead, anticipating what a fast-scaling company will need from IT 12 to 18 months out, and building toward it. Implement control adequate for a pre-IPO level company. • 2. AI-native operations and automation • Bring an AI-first, automate-first mindset to how IT runs: provisioning, access, support deflection, and asset reconciliation. • Lead by example. Build and ship automations yourself, and show both your team and the wider company what good looks like. • Continuously surface AI tooling that makes employees’ lives easier, with a clear, opinionated view on where it adds value and where it’s just noise. • Bring those AI-native ways of working to the rest of the organization, not just to IT. • 3. Team leadership and capability maturity • Lead, grow, and mature a lean IT team into a senior, process-driven function. • Raise the technical bar across the team, coaching toward more technical, AI-fluent ways of working. • Stay hands-on where it counts: scripting, automation, and MDM and identity configuration. • Build the operating rhythm (SLAs, runbooks, prioritization) that lets the team scale its impact without scaling headcount one-for-one. • 4. Global infrastructure, fleet and workplace technology • Own international fleet and device lifecycle end to end, from procurement and enrollment to retirement, across multiple countries. • Run identity, access, and endpoint management to a high standard of reliability for a distributed workforce. • Manage the Barcelona hub’s on-site technology: the office network, meeting-room AV, and video conferencing tools and devices. • Own the IT services behind company off-sites and events, from connectivity and AV to on-the-ground support, wherever the company gathers. • Treat IT’s own security and compliance hygiene (endpoint compliance, identity hygiene, least privilege on IT-managed systems) as a core operating principle. • 5. Procurement, software spend and FinOps • Own visibility into what Preply spends on IT, SaaS, and software tools, and help Finance understand, forecast, and plan that spend. • Partner with Finance and Procurement on contracts, renewals, and vendor rationalization. • Drive cost and compliance efficiency: eliminate shadow IT, consolidate overlapping tools, and negotiate from a position of data. • 6. Data, dashboards and stakeholder management • Build dashboards and reporting that give leadership a clear, current view of IT health, spend, and the status of every initiative. • Provide crisp, proactive follow-ups on where things stand, so leadership never has to chase. • Manage and influence C-level stakeholders directly, translating technical reality into business decisions. • Make decisions from data, not anecdotes. • 7. Partnership with Security • Co-own the identity lifecycle in Okta: joiner, mover and leaver flows, periodic access reviews, least privilege and separation of duties. • Enforce endpoint compliance baselines in Jamf and keep control evidence audit-ready. • Implement and operate the ITGC controls behind SOX readiness and SOC 2, at the standard expected of a company at Preply's stage. • Share ownership of AI tool governance: evaluation, approval and allow lists for anything new entering the environment.