Company overview:
Carroll's Irish Gifts is a 100% Irish owned retail chain of stores established in 1982, that stock leading Irish brands and a wide range of gifts.
We currently carry over 14,000 products across an extensive range of areas including, Irish themed gifts and clothing, Irish jewellery, Aran knitwear clothing and accessories, music and dance, confectionery, plush toys and kitchenware. We also stock a selection of big Irish brands including Guinness licensed product, Newbridge Silverware, and Solvar Jewellery amongst others.
Carroll's Irish Gifts currently have 20 stores nationwide in prime high-street locations, employing over 350 people along with a number of online sales platforms. We are a certified "Great Place to Work" with continuous cultural growth and improvement.
Role overview:
Own, operate, and continuously improve Carroll's end to end IT environment across Stores, Support Office, Warehouse, and eCommerce. Lead day to day operations, incident response, vendor/Software relationships, and the application stack, ensuring secure, stable, and scalable services that keep tills ringing and online sales flowing.
Key Responsibilities
1) Operations & Support
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Run daily IT operations: supervise helpdesk queues, ticket SLAs, hardware lifecycle, patching, asset management (HQ, warehouse, stores).
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Ensure high availability for POS, label printers/scanners, back office PCs, store Wi Fi, and local peripherals.
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Own incident response playbooks; coordinate fixes across MSPs, store staff, and internal teams with clear comms and timely resolution.
2) Network, Security & Infrastructure
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Administer and harden VPNs, firewalls, network segmentation, SD WAN/site links, and Wi Fi (guest vs. staff).
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Monitor and tune performance (latency, bandwidth, uptime) and remediate network issues proactively.
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Maintain identity/access (AAD/M365), endpoint security, MFA, conditional access; lead vulnerability remediation with MSPs.
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Define and test Backup & Disaster Recovery (RPO/RTO) for servers, SaaS/data sources, and store systems; conduct failover drills.
3) Applications & Data
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Own the Microsoft Business Central environment (users, roles/permissions, change/test/upgrade cycles) and integrations with POS, inventory, and finance.
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Govern Power BI workspaces, data refreshes, gateway/config, and dashboard standards for operational and commercial reporting.
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Coordinate Shopify administration (themes/apps, payment/shipping settings, security), and API/integration health with ERP, PIM, and marketing tools.
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Manage release/change processes across the stack with staged testing (sandbox pilot store estate rollout).
4) Vendor & Supplier Management
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Act as primary point of contact for MSPs, POS vendors, telco/ISP, security providers, and SaaS partners; negotiate SLAs, monitor performance, and drive continual service improvement.
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Maintain a living catalogue of services, contracts, renewals, and costs; deliver quarterly reviews and cost saving initiatives.
5) Compliance & Risk
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Ensure GDPR compliance in data handling/storage; partner with Finance/HR on retention and subject rights.
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Oversee PCI DSS controls across POS/payments; lead remediation from audit findings.
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Maintain policy set: acceptable use, access control, incident, backup, DR, and store opening/closing IT checklists.
6) Projects & Continuous Improvement
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Plan and deliver store openings/refreshes (network, POS, signage, peripherals).
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Drive network refreshes, Wi Fi upgrades, POS rollouts, and ERP/eCommerce enhancements; manage budgets, timelines, and stakeholder comms.
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Establish KPIs (availability, MTTR, SLA attainment, cost per ticket) and publish monthly service reports.
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Manage 3rd party vendors for setup and ongoing operation of our planned Dublin Visitor experience.
Skills & Experience
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7+ years in IT operations with 3+ years leading or acting as the senior point of escalation in a retail or multi site environment.
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Strong hands on experience with firewalls/VPNs, switching/Wi Fi, Windows endpoints/servers, Azure AD/M365.
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Practical admin experience with Microsoft Business Central, Power BI, and Shopify (plus common retail POS platforms).
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Proven track record managing MSPs/vendors and delivering upgrades/rollouts across many locations.
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Solid grasp of backup/DR, security hardening, and compliance (GDPR, PCI DSS).
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Excellent communication with non technical stakeholders; calm under pressure during incidents.
Qualifications (nice to have)
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Microsoft certifications (Azure/365/Business Central/Power Platform).
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Network/security certs (e.g., CCNA/CCNP, Fortinet NSE, CompTIA Security+).
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ITIL Foundation; project management exposure (Agile/Prince2).
Attributes
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Ownership mindset; proactive and pragmatic problem solver.
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Service oriented with a focus on store operations uptime and eCommerce conversion.
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Comfortable rolling up sleeves while setting standards and guiding partners.
