IT Operations and Automation Manager

Who we are

Employment Hero is on a mission to make employment easier and more valuable for everyone. Our Employment Operating System brings hiring, HR, payroll and benefits into an all-in-one solution.

Since our inception in 2014, we’ve scaled to a $2 billion valuation and gained a presence in 6 countries globally - Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, the UK and Canada. We now service over 300,000 businesses and more than 2 million employees.

The EH Way

At Employment Hero, we’re proud of our unique DNA, which we call The EH Way.

1. We are Mission First - everything we do (from what we work on, to how we allocate capital and where we focus) is driven by our Mission
2. We are Remote First - we champion a remote environment with a preference for asynchronous communication and a high degree of autonomy
3. We are AI First - we are committed to using AI to accelerate our mission; AI is not just a tool, it’s a fundamental part of how we operate, innovate, and scale
4. We are Apolitical - we do not take a position on political or social topics, unless it relates to our Mission
5. We Live by Our Values - we role model our values 100% of the time
6. We Expect High Performance - we set a high standard and we’re not satisfied with being average

This role

We are evolving how IT operates.

This role is responsible for transforming IT Operations from a primarily human-led support function into an automation-first, agent-assisted capability that continuously learns from how work is done today and eliminates unnecessary manual effort tomorrow.

As the IT Operations and Automation Manager, you will own the operationalisation and automation of IT processes across service desk, technology enablement, and identity workflows. A core part of this role is analysing historical IT tickets and their resolutions, extracting repeatable patterns, and converting them into automated and agentic workflows that safely resolve issues with minimal human intervention.

Success in this role is not measured by ticket throughput or headcount scale, but by sustained reduction in manual work, improved reliability, and faster enablement of the business.

Your key focus areas will be

• Elevating Employee Technology Experience: Lead the IT teams to power the everyday technology experience that ensures a digitally-enabled environment for all global employees.
• Drive the secure and continuous evolution of IT operations by designing and implementing agent-assisted, observable, and continuously improving automated workflows with defined human-in-the-loop guardrails.
• Team Leadership and Service Delivery: Manage and mentor the IT team to guarantee reliable support and fit-for-purpose tools across the organisation.
• Strategic Alignment and Operational Scaling: Shape the overall IT strategy, oversee daily operations, and collaborate with key stakeholders to scale the company's technology capabilities in line with business ambitions.

This will include the following

IT Operations Transformation

• Analyse how IT work is currently performed manually across support, access management, and enablement functions
• Review historical tickets and documented resolutions to identify repeatable decision logic and automation opportunities
• Convert manual workflows into automated or agent-assisted processes that reduce human involvement over time
• Systematically eliminate high-volume, low-risk ticket categories through automation and self-service
  

Automation and Agentic Workflows

• Design and implement agent-assisted workflows using modern automation and AI tooling
• Define clear guardrails, confidence thresholds, and human-in-the-loop handoff points for automated actions
• Ensure automation is safe, observable, auditable, and reversible
• Continuously improve automation accuracy and coverage by feeding outcomes and corrections back into the system
  

Service Desk and Enablement Leadership

• Lead and evolve the Service Desk and Technology Enablement teams as their work shifts from execution to supervision, exception handling, and system improvement
• Set priorities that focus on reducing operational toil rather than scaling manual effort
• Establish clear operating models for when work should be handled by agents versus humans
  

Identity and Access Automation

• Own automation of onboarding, offboarding, and access provisioning across SaaS platforms
• Partner with Information Security to ensure identity workflows align with access control, audit, and risk requirements
• Reduce manual touchpoints in identity and access management wherever possible

Measurement and Continuous Improvement

• Define success metrics focused on automation coverage, ticket deflection, reduction in manual effort, and operational reliability
• Implement feedback loops that ensure automation improves over time rather than stagnates
• Use data to identify what should be automated next and what must remain human-led

Application Portfolio Visibility

• Maintain visibility over SaaS product usage, licensing, and costs to support operational efficiency and scalability
• Collaborate with Finance to provide accurate data for application costing, budgeting, and forecasting
• Support ongoing improvements to tooling and reporting that track system ownership, utilisation, and lifecycle across Employment Hero

Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with Security, Engineering, People, and Finance teams to align automation with business needs and risk appetite
• Clearly communicate what is being automated, why, and how risks are being managed
• Build trust by demonstrating that automation improves outcomes and employee experience

Who you are

To thrive at Employment Hero, you’ll need to embody The EH Way - operating with focus, agility, and an obsession with impact.

For this role, you’ll also bring

• Strong experience leading IT operations, workplace technology, or internal systems teams
• Demonstrated ability to operationalise and automate manual processes, not just manage them
• Systems thinking mindset, able to deconstruct workflows and rebuild them as scalable solutions
• Comfort working with automation platforms, APIs, and AI-assisted tools (hands-on or closely partnered)
• Solid understanding of SaaS environments, identity systems, and enterprise tooling
• Pragmatic approach to risk, security, and change management in automated systems
• Ability to lead teams through significant shifts in how work is performed
• Experience with core technologies including, but not limited to, Google Workspace, JAMF, Atlassian, Zapier, and Relevance AI

What we can offer

At Employment Hero, we don’t just talk about a better way to work - we live it. Joining Employment Hero means

• You will work remotely, with the flexibility to own your time and impact
• You will access cutting-edge tools to amplify your work, knowledge and outputs
• You’ll surround yourself with ambitious, outcome-driven colleagues who challenge you to do the best work of your life
• You’ll own ESOP (employee share options) in one of the world’s fastest-growing tech companies
• You’ll also have access to a wide range of benefits that includes: a very generous parental leave policy, subsidised egg freezing (so you can make the choice that’s right for you, on your terms), a WFH office expense budget, and outstanding learning & development opportunities

We’re AI-first, so you may meet some of our AI tools early in the process. They help us cut the noise, surface great talent fast and make sure every candidate gets a fair, consistent experience.

We verify candidate identity and location as part of our hiring process.

At Employment Hero, we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your application data. To understand how we do so, you can read our Applicant Privacy Policy here employmenthero.com/legals/applicant-policy/

Employment Hero celebrates diverse perspectives and experiences, we invite people of all backgrounds and identities to apply for this position.