IT Operations Director
- Level
- Lead
- Work type
- On-site · Auckland
Not stated in the posting: salary, visa.
Open. First seen 22 October 2026.
About the role
ZURU's standard text
Who We Are
ZURU is a reimagination company. We look for categories that have stood still, then we build next-generation products and brands that set the new standard. ZURU Toys is reimagining play. ZURU Edge is reinventing everyday consumer brands. Rhodes Pet Science is reimagining pet science. ZURU Tech is leading the next building revolution.
ZURU started in 2003 with two brothers from New Zealand, and we're still founder-owned and operated today. Since then we've become the world's second-biggest privately held toy company, and nearly half of all Gen Y and Gen Z households with kids in the US own a ZURU product. Today we're 5,000 people in 34 offices, selling into more than 150 markets, backed by over 100 acres of fully automated manufacturing. And we're only getting started.
The Opportunity
Own global IT Operations for ZURU: employee technology, service delivery, infrastructure and business systems.
Keep core systems available: outages are measured in minutes, never days.
Stay at the front of agent-first IT, and bring ZURU the newest tools before anyone asks.
Lead from the dance floor, not the balcony: automate, fix and ship with the team every week.
The Impact You'll Make
Within 30 days, ship a service win a named business owner can measure.
Every week, report core-system availability and demo automation clearing real requests.
Within 90 days, every region runs on 1 scorecard you set, led by availability.
What You'll Do
Direction and pace
- Set global IT strategy, scorecard, budget and suppliers.
- Make 10 fast decisions to get 7 right, and kill what doesn't work.
Dance floor leadership
- Take the hardest incidents and automations yourself.
- Lead from the work, not from status reports.
Experts leading experts
- Lead regional and functional IT leaders, including China.
- Raise talent density and hold them to pace.
Business partnership
- Sit with business leaders and agree the service that matters most.
Agent-first IT
- Rebuild IT operations around automation and agents.
- Cut repeat incidents and let agents clear routine requests end to end.
Resilience and security
- Test backup and recovery against business needs.
- Apply security standards without over-engineering.
Leadership team
- Sit on the Group Tech, Data & AI leadership team as a peer to business leaders.
- Debate hard, commit, and deputise for the Group Head.
What You'll Bring
- Experience leading IT leaders across regions, including China, with ownership of the function's strategy and budget.
- Track record of measurable business wins within weeks of taking on a function.
- Current, hands-on automation of service workflows through APIs, scripting or AI agents.
- Experience running enterprise identity, endpoints, networks and cloud or datacentre infrastructure at scale.
- Experience owning availability, incident response, tested recovery and supplier performance for business-critical systems.
ZURU's standard text
Who thrives at ZURU
This isn't a 9-to-5. We move fast, think big and set goals most companies would call impossible, then go after them. The people who thrive here are entrepreneurs at heart. They own their work, chase bold ideas and never stop raising the bar.
At ZURU, you drive your career, and we give you the platform to take it as far as you can. There are opportunities here that you won’t find anywhere else, and you'll be surrounded by talented people who make things happen. We're a true meritocracy: we reward impact, not tenure.
How we work
Big ideas happen when great people work side by side, so we're office-first by design. Being together means faster collaboration, sharper decisions and stronger teams, and it's where the real learning happens. Some flexibility may be available depending on the role, location and business needs, but most roles are office-based.
Want to see what life at ZURU really looks like? Follow LIFE@ZURU on Instagram or www.zuru.com
ZURU's standard text
ZURU – Reimagining tomorrow 🚀
ZURU may use AI tools to help screen, assess or select applicants.
What this role asks for
61% of this description is written for the role. The rest is ZURU's standard text, folded away below.
Compared with ZURU's other open jobs.
The team: IT HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 5 open in IT. 4 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in May: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
AWS (3 of 5), Databricks (3 of 5), dbt (3 of 5), Python (3 of 5), BigQuery (2 of 5), CI/CD (2 of 5), Fivetran (2 of 5)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Junior IT Support Engineer posted Oct 5
- Junior Data & AI Engineer posted Oct 1
- Data & AI Engineer posted Sep 28
- Junior AI Integration Engineer posted May 4
From the team and dates on ZURU's own job board.
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