Head of IT Essentials

Ensuring that millions of customers can rely on secure, stable and always-available IT, even in a rapidly changing energy landscape. That is where your leadership makes the difference. Use your expertise to help us remain the expert and reliable energy partner with the personal touch for our customers.

At Essent, we work every day to provide sustainable energy for millions of customers. This is only possible with an IT landscape that is always available and secure. Our IT department forms the digital foundation of Essent: from applications to workplaces and from infrastructure to cybersecurity. We are building Essent as an Energy Tech Company. This requires IT that is not only stable, but also moves with a rapidly changing energy market, regulations (such as NIS2) and increasing digital dependency. Reliability is not a precondition for us, it's the business.

The Manager IT Essentials is accountable for stable, secure, and cost efficient IT services across applications, infrastructure, and modern workplace. The role ensures operational continuity, service quality, and compliance within agreed budgets, while balancing reliability with change.

Key Accountabilities

• Leads end to end service integration across applications, infrastructure, workplace, and vendors
• Responsible for incident, problem and change management
• Owns operational performance, continuous improvement, and compliance with SLAs/OLAs
• Ensures services meet business needs and cost targets
• Owns the service map and all SLAs/OLAs
• Decides on escalation paths and enforces contractual remedies
• Declares and leads major incidents
• Mobilizes internal teams and vendors
• Authorizes executive communications, RCA actions, and change freezes to protect stability
• Accountable for endpoint, Microsoft 365, and identity basics
• Sets tooling, service catalogue, and knowledge base standards
• Oversees external service desk performance and vendor selection within budget guardrails
• Ensures availability, capacity, patching, and disaster recovery for LAN/WAN, firewalls, and core infrastructure
• Authorizes risk assessed maintenance windows and changes
• Works with SRE/operations to prioritize reliability improvements
• Safeguards continuity and minor releases for business applications
• Approves release plans and service windows
• Prioritizes lifecycle and small change backlogs in alignment with Product and UAT/go live activities
• Owns CI and data quality in LeanIX/CMDB
• Ensures service to asset mapping and compliance evidence
• Gates changes on CI completeness and defines standards for discovery, tagging, and license tracking
• Member of IT MT and manager of a team of managers
• Responsible for hiring, coaching, performance management, and capacity allocation
• Approves SOWs and time and materials agreements

Profiel

• Minimum of 7 years in IT service management/delivery, including at least 3 years in people management
• Bachelor’s degree (IT or Business IT); Master’s preferred
• ITIL 4 Foundation (Managing Professional a plus), SIAM, and relevant technical certifications (e.g., Microsoft 365, Azure, Cisco)
• Fluent in Dutch and English

Key Competencies

• Strong people leadership and coaching skills
• Able to explain complex IT topics to non technical stakeholders
• Broad understanding of infrastructure, applications, and workplace tooling
• Balances stability, risk, and change while meeting agreed KPIs
• Builds effective relationships across IT, business, and vendors
• The perfect candidate for this role excels in operational excellence and knows how to effectively manage both internal and external parties.

Wij bieden jou

• We appreciate and value the energy and motivation you put into your work so that we can be the best energy partner for our customers. We show this by providing a nice employment package.
• A job in which you can use your expertise to contribute to the sustainability of the Netherlands!
• A flexible benefit budget that you can save every month as desired, have it paid out or use for leave. This budget consists of the value of: 8% holiday pay, 1.8% benefit contribution and 10 extra-statutory days off
• An annual bonus of 20% to further express our appreciation
• The opportunity to work within a true hybrid model. You decide where you work, every day. Interested in a workation? You can work 20 days a year from another country within Europe
• A discount on your energy bill and on all products of our service partners (solar panels, heat pump, maintenance, etc.)
• A beautiful headquarters within walking distance of Den Bosch Central Station, featuring a great coffee bar, a company restaurant, and free fresh fruit.
• A gross mobility budget of €1.235 per month.
• You can follow training programs, courses, and education at our expense. We offer plenty of development opportunities within other countries.
• And last but not least: an environment in which you can really be yourself. For us, all that matters is who you are and what you can do.

Over de organisatie

As an energy provider, we support over 2.5 million customers in both the private and business markets. Through our brands Essent, Energiedirect, Vandebron, along with our service partners across the Netherlands, we help our customers take the next step in the energy transition—embracing a more sustainable lifestyle and saving energy. We do this with products such as solar panels, heat pumps, and insulation for energy-efficient homes. Additionally, we invest heavily in innovative solutions that are shaping the energy system of the future, including hydrogen and heating and cooling solutions.