Head of IT Recruitment
Placing the IT leaders who run technology functions that Irish businesses depend on every day.
What This Role Means for Irish Business
The Head of IT is one of the most important hires an Irish SME can make. This is the person who keeps everything running, makes the right technology decisions, manages the team, and increasingly has to communicate technology risk and strategy to senior leadership.
Many Irish companies reach a point where informal IT management stops being enough, whether that is a developer who has grown into the role, an IT manager stretched beyond capacity, or a business that has simply outgrown its current technology leadership. The trigger varies but the need is the same.
Finding the right Head of IT for your business takes more than a job board posting. It takes someone who understands the Irish IT market, who knows what good looks like at this level, and who can match the right candidate to the right stage of business.
What We Do
We place Heads of IT across Irish businesses from indigenous companies making their first dedicated IT leadership hire to multinationals restructuring their technology function.
We understand what this role looks like at different stages of business growth and across different sectors. A Head of IT in a professional services firm of 100 people is a very different hire to one in a manufacturing company of 400.
We focus on candidates who combine technical credibility with leadership capability. The best Heads of IT in Ireland can manage infrastructure, lead a team, handle a board conversation about risk, and keep the business moving.
Roles We Place
- Head of IT
- IT Director
- Director of Information Technology
- Head of Technology Operations
- Head of IT and Digital
- Senior IT Operations Manager
How We Work
We start by understanding your business, not just the role. What is the current state of your IT function? What are the immediate priorities? What does success look like in 12 months? What kind of leader will work in your culture?
These questions shape the search. They also help us have honest conversations with candidates about what the role really involves, which means better matching and fewer surprises after the hire.
We move quickly without cutting corners. Most Head of IT searches at Star Recruitment are completed within six to ten weeks.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Head of IT typically runs the technology function operationally, managing infrastructure, systems, and the IT team. A CIO operates at a more strategic level, setting technology direction, influencing business strategy, and representing IT at board level.
The right answer depends on your business size, complexity, and growth ambitions. We help clients make this call before the search starts.
This is a fair question and one we hear often. The honest answer is that the cost of a poor IT leadership hire, in terms of downtime, security exposure, failed projects, and team disruption, usually far exceeds the cost of getting the right person in.
We work within realistic budget constraints and provide honest market guidance on what is achievable at different salary levels.
We understand urgency. If there is genuine timeline pressure, we will say so upfront and manage the search accordingly. Most Head of IT searches at Star Recruitment are completed within six to ten weeks, depending on how clear the brief is, how quickly decisions can be made, and how available the right candidates are.
Where the brief is clear and the client is decisive, we can often move faster.
We have placed Heads of IT across financial services, professional services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, logistics, and the public sector in Ireland. Each sector has its own technology challenges and we factor that into every search.
A Head of IT at an Irish business with between 200 and 1,000 employees will typically attract a permanent salary in the range of €90,000 to €130,000 plus. The figure is driven primarily by the size of the IT function the person will be managing, the maturity of the technology environment, and whether the role carries a team leadership remit or is more of a practical technical management position.
At larger organisations, or in sectors such as financial services, professional services, or construction where technology infrastructure is more complex, the range can extend to €140,000 or beyond.
For interim Head of IT engagements, where a business needs experienced leadership during a period of transition, typical day rates in Ireland run from €750 to €1,200 per day, depending on the seniority and scope of the role.
The single biggest driver of variation is organisational complexity. What is considered a strong Head of IT for a professional services firm of 250 people looks quite different from the equivalent role in a manufacturing business of 1,000. If you would like a view of what the market would expect for your specific situation, get in touch and we will take it from there.