Senior IT Lead

About Mindsets

Mindsets is a consulting and advisory firm with offices in Beirut, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Cairo, Nicosia, Rotterdam, and Houston. We work with private as well as government and public sector clients across the Gulf, Middle East, North Africa, Europe and North America.

We are running a transformation program covering CRM, SharePoint with AI indexing, knowledge management, cloud, and telephony. We are also bringing our managed services in-house through 2026. The Senior IT Lead will own this work.

The Role

This is a hands-on senior role. You will set IT direction for the firm, manage the IT function, and stay close to the technical work. The role spans nine offices and five business units. It covers IT strategy and budget, security and access, vendor and contract management, AI governance, and the transformation program currently underway. You will need to move between long-range planning and day-to-day technical decisions.

What You Will Do

Strategy and budget

- Build the annual IT budget and track spend each month

- Maintain a 3-year IT roadmap covering hardware refresh and architecture standards

- Produce the monthly IT report, run quarterly reviews, and contribute to board-level updates on IT and cyber risk

- Develop CapEx business cases for COO approval

Transformation and vendors

- Support the rollout and upgrade of CRM, SharePoint with AI indexing, knowledge Management, cloud infrastructure and IP telephony

- Lead the phase-out of our current Managed Service Provider (MSP) through 1H26 and bring the work in-house

- Run RFPs, negotiate contracts, track renewals, and enforce SLAs

- Manage the license inventory and stop spending on unused seats

Security and access

- Write and maintain the security policy

- Investigate security incidents and run awareness training

- Manage privileged accounts and run quarterly access reviews

- Provision new joiners and remove leaver access within 24 hours across all nine offices

- Maintain the data residency picture across our systems

AI governance

- Set the firm's AI usage policy across Claude, ChatGPT, and Azure OpenAI

- Protect firm and client data in AI workflows

Operations

- Stay hands-on across Microsoft 365, Azure AD / Entra ID, Intune, conditional access, endpoints, and networking

- Manage and develop the IT Administrator

- Build the IT continuity playbook and document systems for two-deep coverage

- Write and maintain IT standard operating policies and procedures

What You Need

- 8 to 10 years of IT experience, with at least 3 years in a senior or lead role

- Currently hands-on with Microsoft 365 ecosystem, Azure AD / Entra ID

- Track record of managing vendors and running MSP transitions

- Working knowledge of ISO 27001 or NIST Cybersecurity Framework

- Experience building and running an annual IT budget

- Multi-country IT experience, GCC preferred

- Strong written English and Arabic

- Comfortable writing policy and holding the line with senior stakeholders

Nice to Have

- ITIL v4, ISO 27001, CISM, or PMP certification

- Experience supporting or leading a major transformation or system migration

- Familiarity with AI tooling governance in a consulting or professional services firm

- Experience with government or public sector clients