Infrastructure Relationship Lead

Company Profile

RS2 offers secure payment services, payment software and managed services to clients in over 35 countries. The company upholds the highest industry standards and RS2’s in-house designed payments solution is the software of choice by many of the world’s leading and most innovative banks and financial institutions.

The Role

Reporting to the ‘Head of Data Center Services’ the Infrastructure Relationship Lead works closely with the department managers, and acts as the strategic interface between the Infrastructure & IT Operations department and internal/external stakeholders, primarily Third-Party Vendors. The role ensures that infrastructure capacity, environment readiness, and technical delivery align seamlessly with business timelines and client expectations, while managing service level commitments and operational dependencies. The role includes vendor ownership, service governance, and operational/commercial responsibility

Responsibilities

• Report to the ‘Head of Data Center Services’.
• Act as the primary custodian of all Infrastructure and IT Operations Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Master Services Agreements (MSAs), and Underpinning Contracts with external vendors (e.g., AWS, Oracle).
• Designs, evaluates, and negotiate diverse commercial engagement models (e.g. fixed-price, consumption-based, tiered-support, or gain-share models) with key infrastructure partners to ensure they align with RS2’s operational and financial strategy.
• Oversee end-to-end contract governance for the department’s technology stack. Ensure all Master Service Agreements (MSAs), Statements of Work (SOWs), and Underpinning Contracts are accurately tracked, renewed timely, and structurally aligned with corporate legal and risk standards.
• Participate heavily in Operational review meetings with vendors to evaluate their performance against contracted KPIs (e.g. system uptime, MTTR, patch delivery timelines).
• Participate in analyzing and monitoring infrastructure utilization trends to drive service consumption optimization, ensuring that cloud infrastructure, storage, and computing resources are scaled dynamically and efficiently without waste.
• Monitor vendor consumption metrics (e.g., AWS cloud spend, Oracle licensing cores) to ensure the company is optimized under current commitment tiers and not incurring overage penalties.
• Serve as the designated internal escalation point when critical vendor support (e.g., Oracle Premier Support, AWS Enterprise Support) fails to meet expected turnaround times during high-severity incidents.
• Own the continuous review of software footprints (e.g., Oracle database cores, enterprise OS licenses) to execute licensing and service cost optimization strategies, minimizing compliance risks and eliminating shelf ware.
• Drive third-party vendors to deliver comprehensive Root Cause Analyses (RCAs) for infrastructure failures, ensuring they implement permanent bug fixes or patches rather than temporary workarounds.
• Actively research and identify early-adoption, beta, or pilot programs offered by tier-1 vendors (e.g. AWS Preview features, Oracle Alpha programs, AI-driven FinOps tools) that can optimize operations or reduce infrastructure overhead.
• Scout for modern framework incentives, such as carbon-neutral cloud credits, vendor-sponsored migration acceleration programs (MAP), or specialized training grants.
• Tangible savings realized through identifying underutilized vendor features, optimizing license footprints, or leveraging vendor-funded programs.
• Reduction in the number of unresolved vendor-side blockers impacting internal project timelines.
• Number of vendor-sponsored pilot programs assessed, tested, or successfully integrated into the production/sandbox roadmap annually.
• Work closely with all the teams in the ‘Infrastructure and IT Operations’ department.
• Assist in proper incident management including RCAs and corrective measures.
• Follow up on JIRA tickets related to all the IT Operations.

Requirements

• Preferably in possession of a university degree in computing, Information Technology, or Business Administration.
• Preferably two years’ experience in an IT leadership role, or similar.
• Broad knowledge of Vendor relationship management and administration.
• A broad knowledge of IT infrastructure and IS applications including methods and techniques of business continuity and disaster recovery.
• An understanding of core infrastructure concepts
• AWS Cloud Practitioner are ideal.
• Highly motivated professional individual and can perform under pressure.
• Attention to detail and experience in a highly collaborative environment is a must.
• Possess good communication skills and fluency in written and spoken English.
• Strong organisational and time management skills, able to prioritize across different tasks and meet deadlines as per business objectives.

Think you’ve got what it takes?

Apply directly to get the conversation started! All applications will be treated with strict confidence.