Head of the Operations Unit

Department: Digital Factory

Reporting Manager: Head of Digital Factory

Supervision: DevOps Engineers, Systems Administrators, Network Administrators, Technical Support

Location: Agence Togo Digital (ATD)

Positions available: 1

Main Mission

The Head of the IT Operations Unit is responsible for guaranteeing the availability, stability, security, and performance of the digital platforms operated by the Agency.

He/she supervises day-to-day technical operations, organizes production environments, and ensures compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for systems used by citizens and public administrations.

He/she serves as the ultimate custodian of the proper technical functioning of services live in production.

Responsibilities

1. Technical Operations Supervision

• Ensure the seamless operations of platforms live in production.

• Supervise infrastructures (servers, cloud, networks, applications).

• Guarantee high availability and business continuity.

• Manage and resolve technical incidents.

2. Operations Team Management

• Lead and manage DevOps engineers and systems administrators.

• Organize on-call schedules, rosters, and technical shifts.

• Define and standardize IT operational procedures.

• Develop and upskill the operations team.

3. Production Release Management

• Oversee and supervise production deployments.

• Validate and sign off on production rollouts.

• Ensure close coordination with software development teams.

4. Observability and Monitoring

• Implement, maintain, and track system monitoring and observability tools.

• Analyze incident root causes and execute corrective actions.

• Produce availability and performance reports (including metrics such as platform uptime, incident rates, mean time to resolution (MTTR), etc.).

5. Security and Business Continuity

• Guarantee the security of active IT infrastructure and operating systems.

• Supervise data backup and recovery strategies.

• Ensure the readiness of Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP).

• Ensure the readiness of Business Continuity Plans (BCP).

6. Implementation of Operations Processes

• Define, refine, and improve operational procedures, including incident management, change management, and access control management.

7. Cross-Departmental Coordination

• Collaborate closely with architects, product managers, project managers, and support officers to deliver high-quality, seamless, and user-friendly products.

Required Technical Skills

• Proven and deep knowledge of various operating systems, including Linux environments.

• Required knowledge to manage on-premises private cloud infrastructures or public clouds (AWS, Azure, OVH, or equivalent).

• High familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, and CI/CD deployment pipelines.

• High familiarity with observability platforms and tooling such as Grafana, Prometheus, and/or the ELK stack.

• Solid understanding of the deployment and maintenance processes for networks and servers.

Managerial Skills

• Technical team management

• Incident and crisis management

• Strong organizational skills

• Leadership

• Strategic decision-making

Qualifications

• Education: Minimum of a Master's degree (BAC+5) in Computer Science, Systems and Networks, Telecommunications, or a related field.

• Experience: Minimum of 5 years of technical experience, including at least 3 years managing IT operations for critical, large-scale, national platforms.

• Languages: Full professional proficiency in French (written and spoken); fluency in English is a strong asset.