Job Description

About EiM

Education in Motion (EiM) is a global leader in pioneering education for a sustainable future, inspiring generations of learners to Live Worldwise. Since the founding of its first school over two decades ago, EiM has grown its diverse portfolio of schools and brands, offering a blend of innovation and tradition through a range of premium educational offerings across the globe. EiM scales learnings, opportunities and resources across its diverse family, enabling each of its brands to be at the cutting-edge of technology, innovation and education. These include Dulwich College International, which offers both K-12 international schools and International High School Programme; Dehong®, offering bilingual education; Green School International, promoting sustainability across Bali and the world; Sherfield School in the United Kingdom; Hochalpines Institut Ftan AG (HIF) in Switzerland; Ignite, a unique outdoors-based overseas residential programme; and Chinese-language learning and teaching platform Wo Hui Mandarin.

About Role

A leadership role combining hands-on requirements for IT infrastructure and service with strategic IT business partnering for the region. Reporting to the Group CIO within the Group Technology Function, the postholder is accountable for the reliability, security (partnering with EiM’s Cyber Team), performance and lifecycle of the infrastructure that underpins teaching, learning and operations across the group’s growing groups of schools globally, with specific BP responsibilities for China & Singapore located schools.  

The role is the bridge between technology and the business, partnering with regional management teams and school leadership to translate priorities into infrastructure roadmaps and ensure technology demonstrably enables educational and operational outcomes. It sets common architecture and standards across the multi-country estate while respecting each market’s regulatory and operating realities. The infrastructure remit is lifecycle and continuous improvement of the existing estate as well as supporting input for M&A and greenfield opportunities. The focus is standardisation, ongoing modernisation and refresh cycles. 

What You Will Contribute To

• Pioneering education for a sustainable future
• Continuously innovate our educational offering to help our students make a positive difference
• Investing in the future through progressive and collaborative experience platforms

You Will Be A Great Fit If You Are

• Guided by the belief that students come first and care deeply about the safeguarding of our students
• Passionate about trying out new ideas and practices and able to exercise creativity and entrepreneurship with a pioneering spirit
• Excited to contribute to a diverse, dynamic, and forward-looking environment

Duties and Responsibilities

Infrastructure leadership (all layers)  

• Help shape the strategic and architectural recommendations in partnership with the CIO, infrastructure team and wider Group strategy, while owning delivery and operational integrity of infrastructure across all layers: network (LAN/WLAN/WAN/SD-WAN), connectivity, compute, storage, virtualisation, server rooms, cloud (Azure), endpoint, identity and classroom AV. 
• Define and enforce region-wide standards and reference architectures, in an ongoing journey driving a consistent, future-proofed and scalable model. 
• Lead the planned lifecycle refresh of the estate including capacity, performance, resilience and end-of-life, sequenced to minimise disruption to the school calendar. 
• Ensure high availability, business continuity and tested backup/disaster recovery across all sites. 
• Own MDM and endpoint lifecycle (staff and, where applicable, student devices) and classroom AV standards, delivery and support in conjunction with school-based technology teams. 
• Provide senior technical escalation and 2nd/3rd-line leadership for complex, cross-site issues.  

IT business partnering  

• Act as the single point of contact between Group Technology and regional management teams and school IT leadership, building credible relationships across cultures and time zones. 
• Understand business and educational priorities; surface and shape demand; translate needs into prioritised roadmaps aligned to group strategy. 
• Advise stakeholders on technology trends and trade-offs with proactive recommendations rather than order-taking. 
• Partner with the Academic Data team, providing the platform on which academic applications run (ownership boundaries below). 
• Partner with Business Functional teams to ensure appropriate IT service to the regional teams.   
• Support regional teams in realising measurable value from technology investment and report on service performance.  

Business operations applications support  

• Support selected business operations applications, ensuring availability, performance, security, integration and lifecycle currency.  
• Provide the platform, identity, access and connectivity these applications depend on, plus application support to the agreed depth, in partnership with business/process owners and vendors. 
• Maintain clear ownership boundaries: academic applications sit with the Academic Data team (this role provides the supporting infrastructure), while select business operations applications are supported and owned within this role.  

Security, identity & multi-jurisdiction compliance  

• Drive an identity-first, Zero Trust posture, with identity as the primary control plane. 
• In partnership with EiM Cyber team, continuously harden Microsoft Entra ID, conditional access, MFA, privileged access, and governance of human and machine identities.
• Embed security into network and platform design (segmentation, endpoint hardening) with the EiM Cyber team. 
• Meet each market’s regulatory requirements: China (CSL, DSL, PIPL; data localisation and cross-border transfer; MLPS 2.0; ICP; Singapore (PDPA) in partnership with EiM Legal team. 
• Account for China operating realities: cross-border connectivity/latency and sovereign cloud (Azure (21V) and Microsoft 365.  

Duties and Responsibilities Continued

AI & innovation  

• Provide the secure, well-governed infrastructure foundation for AI adoption (identity, data access controls, endpoint readiness, network capacity). 
• Own existing automations and seek continuous improvement of AI and automation opportunities within IT operations (AIOps, observability, automated remediation) to improve reliability and efficiency. 
• Contribute to responsible-AI governance for infrastructure-level controls.  

Service operations & continuous improvement  

• Maintain ITIL-aligned service management (incident, problem, change, asset/configuration) across all sites. 
• Define and report meaningful KPIs: availability, performance, security posture, project delivery and lifecycle currency etc 
• Improve observability and monitoring to reduce blind spots across the distributed estate.  

Team leadership  

• Lead, develop and coach an HQ infrastructure team of five (including one people-manager) across HQ. 
• Set direction and objectives, manage performance and support professional development.  
• Build strong relationships with school-based IT staff with matrix reporting lines.  

Vendor & cost management  

• Manage relationships with infrastructure vendors, carriers and service providers across the region. 
• Prepare business cases and recommend infrastructure budget, investment and procurement decisions to the Group CIO; deliver within delegated authority. 
• Drive value and cost discipline (lifecycle planning, consolidation, cloud cost/FinOps). 

Essential Skills and Experience

Technical Expertise Required 

Essential  

• Networking: Cisco enterprise networking (routing, switching, wireless; SD-WAN / secure access an advantage), multi-site / multi-country. 
• Identity: Microsoft Entra ID: conditional access, MFA, privileged identity/access management, governance. 
• Productivity: Microsoft 365 administration, security and governance. 
• Cloud: Microsoft Azure: core infrastructure, networking, security and cost management. 
• Endpoint: MDM / endpoint management (e.g. Intune) for mixed device fleets. 
• Core infrastructure: compute, storage, virtualisation, server/data-centre operations, backup/DR. 
• Security: Zero Trust / identity-first architecture, segmentation, endpoint hardening. 
• Classroom AV: standards and delivery in an education environment. 
• Business operations applications technical support: finance/ERP, HRIS, admissions/CRM 
• Service management: ITIL / IT service management.  

Preferred  

• AI in infrastructure and operations (AIOps, automation, observability) and providing infrastructure for AI adoption. 
• China-sovereign Microsoft cloud (Azure / Microsoft 365). 
• Infrastructure supporting school information systems and learning platforms (with an academic data team). 
• Scripting / infrastructure-as-code and platform automation.  

Experience & Qualifications 

Essential  

• Substantial experience leading IT infrastructure across all layers in a multi-site, ideally multi-country, organisation. 
• Demonstrable IT business partnering / stakeholder leadership translating business needs into delivery. 
• Experience supporting business operations applications (finance/ERP, HR, admissions/CRM) alongside core infrastructure. 
• Proven people leadership, including managing managers or senior technical staff. 
• Working knowledge of data-protection / cybersecurity compliance in China (PIPL/CSL/DSL, MLPS, cross-border transfer) and ideally Singapore (PDPA) and/or South Korea (PIPA). 
• Fluent in English and Mandarin (spoken and written). 
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, IT, Engineering or related field or equivalent experience.  

Preferred  

• Education sector experience (international K-12 strongly preferred), or comparable distributed, multi-site environments. 
• Certifications, e.g. Cisco (CCNP), Microsoft (Azure / Identity / Microsoft 365), security (CISSP), ITIL; PMP/PRINCE2 an advantage.  

Person Specification & Competencies 

• Excellent communicator and relationship-builder across cultures, languages and time zones. 
• Strategic yet pragmatic: sets standards and roadmaps while staying hands-on and delivery-focused. 
• Strong business acumen; frames technology in terms of educational and operational outcomes. 
• Sound judgement on risk, security and compliance in a complex and dynamic regulatory landscape. 
• Collaborative leader who develops people and builds trust across HQ and schools.  

Practical Details 

Base: Shanghai, China. Travel: regular travel to schools across China and Singapore. Languages: fluent English and Mandarin required.   

Core Competencies

Drive Improvement, Innovation and Change 

The ability to innovate and lead change by identifying improvement areas, lifelong learning and implementing new tools and technology for team and group benefits. Cultivates a creative team atmosphere allowing people to embrace change and innovative ideas.

Drive Sustainability

The ability to think and act responsibly and promote sustainable practices to maximise social impact and personal impact, maintain a positive outlook at work, take accountability of own practice, and have a global mindset to achieve sustainable development goals.

Work Inclusively and Foster Partnership

The ability to be adaptable and transparent in interacting with people with different backgrounds, work collaboratively and across boundaries, regardless of personal job responsibility, and be consultative to draw informed decisions and build a wider community with students, parents, and colleagues to ensure their voice is heard and valued.

Delivering Results

The ability to deliver desired results, in accordance with business objectives, plan activities and projects well in advance, take account of possible changing circumstances consistently, and focus on the internal and external customers satisfaction to keep achieving high standard quality.

Problem Solving and Conceptual Thinking

The ability to analyse relevant data and all other sources of information, to break them into parts, to identify the most probable cause of a problem and generate feasible solutions from a broad perspective.

Decision Making

The ability to take responsibility and initiative to work under own direction while showing the ability to make and implement informed, timely decisions, based on a comprehensive analysis and the implications of potential outcomes.

Professionalism

The ability to demonstrate business acumen by understanding different functions, proactively develop the appropriate level of expertise required to successfully complete tasks and show commitment to the group values and ethics.

Develop Safe and Supportive Learning Environment

EiM employees are committed to safeguarding and to promoting the welfare of children and young people. They ensure a secure, stimulating and well managed learning environment that promotes a sense of safety, support and wellbeing.

EIM believes that each employee makes a significant contribution to our success and that contributions should not be limited by the assigned responsibilities. Therefore, this job description is designed to outline primary responsibilities but not limit the employee nor EIM to only the work identified. It is the expectation of the Company, that each employee will offer his/her services wherever and whenever necessary to ensure the success of our organisation. All appointments are subject to an interview, identity and background checks, social media checks in conjunction with a successful visa/work permit application (for expat candidates).

Equity Diversity Inclusion Statement

EiM is committed to diversity within its team, organisational practices, policies and culture. It recognises that people with different backgrounds, skills, attitudes and experiences bring fresh ideas and perceptions, and it encourages and leverages these differences to make its work more relevant and approachable. EiM will not discriminate or tolerate discriminatory behaviour on any grounds such as, but not limited to, race, gender, disability, nationality, national or ethnic origin, religion or belief, marital/partnership or family status, sexual orientation, age or socioeconomic background. EiM strives to be an inclusive workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging, has a voice, can raise concerns, and feels comfortable and confident. It expects everyone who works with it to share this commitment and to act accordingly, as it aspires to best serve the EiM mission and its community.