Tala is looking for an experienced IT leader to develop and execute our global IT strategy. Tala is a world leader in providing direct loans and financial services in emerging markets. We are a global team with diverse backgrounds who are singularly focused on using technology, data, and a customer-centric approach to meet the financial needs of the 2+ billion people of the emerging global middle class.

In this role, you’ll be responsible for creating and leading an IT department with ultimate accountability for IT in Santa Monica as well as offices in each market where we operate (Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines, and Mexico). Your teams will be responsible for troubleshooting, resolution, and maintenance of all office IT, networking, and virtual environment infrastructures. You will be responsible for articulating a global IT strategy (systems, staff, budgeting, etc.) and then executing on that strategy. Lastly, you’ll identify and lead change management initiatives to drive maximum uptime, functionality, and resiliency of our network, hardware, and related software applications, with responsibility for identifying and managing vendors to accomplish these goals.

Great candidates will have deep experience leading IT departments for a global technology company with offices worldwide, strong technical and vendor management skills, and experience managing large office expansion/infrastructure projects. You can and will roll up your sleeves to solve problems: you have a strong sense of accountability for end-user experience and systems uptime. You are a strong communicator, ensuring a large, varied audience understands issues, root cause, dependencies, and tradeoffs between different solutions alternatives.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and own our global IT strategy, with initial focus on the US, Kenya, Philippines, Tanzania, and Mexico. Build teams and/or vendor relationships to execute that strategy.
• Develop appropriate in-country IT helpdesk/support functions, in-house and/or through vendors. Own uptime, resiliency, redundancy requirements worldwide.
• Handle all troubleshooting, technical support, diagnosis, and change management to maximize functionality and up-time of internal and third-party networks, hardware, software, applications, and other virtual environment infrastructures.
• Conduct gap analysis of IT systems, staff, and vendors with recommendations and budget requirements to management.
• Evaluate, onboard, and manage performance of IT vendors.
• Recommend and lead change management activities that minimize service disruption impacts on internal users, including planning and cost-effective execution of office capacity increases.
• Ensure redundancy, resiliency, and identify dependencies for networking infrastructure and software applications.
• Develop and own global IT budget.
• Implement Information Security policy.

Requirements:

• 5+ years experience managing IT, infrastructure, and network support teams for a global company with distributed offices & staff
• 3+ years experience leading IT capacity increase projects for large offices
• Experience deploying a global IT helpdesk strategy
• Experience directly hiring and managing IT staff
• Experience evaluating and managing IT and network suppliers/vendors
• Experience developing budgets for an IT department
• Experience leading implementation of company-wide IT solutions improvements
• Willingness and ability to be available off-hours/on-call
• Ability to travel to emerging markets
• Experience with the following tools/systems: Hardware (Apple, Linux Desktop, PC), routers (Palo Alto, Cisco, D-Link Switch, TP-Link Switch), VoIP (SIP, Codecs - G711, G729, G723.1, QoS), Google Suite (email, browser, docs), development/task mgmt. (SSH, Github, VPN, Jira), communications (Google Hangouts, Slack, Skype, Zoom)

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• Experience managing IT departments for a digital technology company
• Experience managing IT strategy for offices in emerging markets
• Experience working in a startup environment

We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse team with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We focus on hiring talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

About Tala:

Tala is the leading mobile technology and data science company committed to financial inclusion globally. Millions of people have borrowed through Tala's smartphone app, which provides instant, personalized credit to underserved customers in East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Tala is backed by leading venture and impact investors including PayPal, Revolution Growth, IVP, and Lowercase Capital. Tala is headquartered in Santa Monica with additional offices in Nairobi, Manila, Dar Es Salaam, Mexico City, and Bangalore.