Director of IT

WE POWER PEOPLE’S PROGRESS. At Preply, we’re all about creating life-changing learning experiences. We help people discover the magic of the perfect tutor, craft a personalised learning journey, and stay motivated to keep growing. Our approach is human-led, tech-enabled - and it’s creating real impact. We’ve just reached unicorn status with a $150M Series D, accelerating our vision to transform education through human-led, AI-enhanced learning. Today, 100,000+ tutors teach 90+ languages to learners in 180 countries - and we’re only getting started. As a category-defining company, we’re shaping what the future of learning looks like at global scale. Every Preply lesson sparks change, fuels ambition, and drives progress that matters. Joining Preply means helping define the future of education at global scale, and building something that truly matters for millions of people, every day. MEET THE TEAM! You'll lead Preply's IT team: a lean, capable group that keeps a fast-moving, globally distributed company running every day. With strong foundations already in place, the next chapter is about increasing automation, strengthening operational excellence, and evolving IT into a more strategic function. This is the role that will lead that transformation. You’ll be both the architect and the hands-on operator: setting the vision and tooling strategy for the whole organization, while staying close enough to the systems to script, automate, and build alongside your team. You’ll report into senior technology leadership and work directly with C-level stakeholders to make IT a measurable driver of efficiency, cost control, and employee experience. WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING: 1. Strategy, vision and business enablement - Own and evolve a multi-quarter IT roadmap tied directly to Preply’s business goals, treating IT as an enabler of growth rather than a cost center. - Set the tooling strategy and standards across the organization: decide what we adopt, consolidate, and retire, and articulate why. - Operate fluidly across altitudes: set direction with leadership one moment, and make sharp technical calls the next. - Plan ahead, anticipating what a fast-scaling company will need from IT 12 to 18 months out, and building toward it. 2. AI-native operations and automation - Bring an AI-first, automate-first mindset to how IT runs: provisioning, access, support deflection, and asset reconciliation. - Lead by example. Build and ship automations yourself, and show both your team and the wider company what good looks like. - Continuously surface AI tooling that makes employees’ lives easier, with a clear, opinionated view on where it adds value and where it’s just noise. - Bring those AI-native ways of working to the rest of the organization, not just to IT. 3. Team leadership and capability maturity - Lead, grow, and mature a lean IT team into a senior, process-driven function. - Raise the technical bar across the team, coaching toward more technical, AI-fluent ways of working. - Stay hands-on where it counts: scripting, automation, and MDM and identity configuration. - Build the operating rhythm (SLAs, runbooks, prioritization) that lets the team scale its impact without scaling headcount one-for-one. 4. Global infrastructure, fleet and workplace technology - Own international fleet and device lifecycle end to end, from procurement and enrollment to retirement, across multiple countries. - Run identity, access, and endpoint management to a high standard of reliability for a distributed workforce. - Manage the Barcelona hub’s on-site technology: the office network, meeting-room AV, and video conferencing tools and devices. - Own the IT services behind company off-sites and events, from connectivity and AV to on-the-ground support, wherever the company gathers. - Treat IT’s own security and compliance hygiene (endpoint compliance, identity hygiene, least privilege on IT-managed systems) as a core operating principle. 5. Procurement, software spend and FinO…