Craig Duggan

Strategic IT leader with 20+ years' progression from hands-on infrastructure delivery to head-of-function leadership across financial services, healthcare and transport. At Go-Ahead Group, owns the operating model for a 20-strong, multi-disciplinary IT function - translating executive strategy into resilient, secure and cost-effective operations. I combine deep technical credibility with the strategic outlook, commercial stewardship and people leadership required to own an organisation's IT strategy and operations at Head of IT level.

Based in Newcastle, willing to commute within North-East, and willing to undergo UK security clearance.

Technical Operations Manager at Go-Ahead Group (2022-09 – Present)

Provide strategic leadership to a 20-strong, multi-disciplinary IT function, aligning infrastructure, operations and project delivery with organisational priorities.

• Deliver data-driven insight and executive reporting to senior leadership, enabling informed decisions on IT performance, risk and transformation investment.
• Own resource strategy and capacity planning, balancing BAU operations with strategic programmes while protecting SLA performance and resilience.
• Lead talent and capability development, embedding a high-performance culture through coaching and succession planning.
• Act as senior vendor and commercial stakeholder, driving value through strategic supplier partnerships and contract governance.

Infrastructure Lead at Northumbria Healthcare NHS FT (2020-10 – 2022-09)

Led a team of 7 system administrators responsible for 400 servers across multiple sites, reporting performance and delivery to senior management.

• Introduced a skills matrix, 3rd-line SLAs and a knowledge-transfer programme that shifted resolution left into the service desk.
• Ran disaster recovery rehearsals and vulnerability/backup improvements, reporting risk to senior stakeholders.

Infrastructure Remediation Specialist at Intrinsic / Quilter Financial Planning (2019-08 – 2020-10)

Set and executed the strategic plan for managed security services across 5,000 servers and 5,000 end-user devices.

• Directed vulnerability remediation and quarterly firewall audits, reporting risk via executive security dashboards.
• Conducted regular security scans of the business infrastructure and network to identify vulnerabilities in security in line with company policy.

Technical Service Desk Manager at Intrinsic / Quilter Financial Planning (2017-02 – 2019-08)

Built and led a 20-person IT Service Desk, introducing SLAs, KPIs and incident/change/problem management to raise service maturity.

• Managed a 1,200-user device refresh programme and supplier performance reviews.

System Administrator & Team Leader at Positive Solutions / Intrinsic (2004-11 – 2017-02)

Progressed from systems administration to leading a 4-person infrastructure, network and telephony team.

• Delivered a physical-to-virtual server transformation and an 1,800-seat Exchange 2010 rollout.
• Managed escalations for all IT issues and reported to the Head of IT when necessary.

GCSEs & A-Levels – Kenton Comprehensive School (1996 – 2003)