IT Engineer

Job description

About Mary’s Meals

Mary’s Meals is a global movement supported by people from all walks of life and united by one mission — that every child receives a nutritious daily meal in their place of education. Today, over 3 million children across 18 countries are receiving Mary’s Meals. In Zambia alone, we reach over 700,000 children every school day in 1,574 schools across 17 districts (15 in Eastern Province and 2 in Northern Province).

The role

We are recruiting an IT Engineer to join our team in Chipata. This is the lead local IT position at Mary’s Meals Zambia. You will take ownership of infrastructure operations, security and end-user support across our national office and district sites, working as part of an international team and reporting locally to the Head of Services (MMZ), with a functional line into Mary’s Meals International’s Head of Infrastructure & Operations in the UK.

The technical estate you will operate: Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams), Microsoft Entra ID with Conditional Access and MFA, Microsoft Intune for endpoint and mobile management, the Microsoft Defender suite (Endpoint, Office 365, Identity), Cisco Meraki cloud-managed networking, Druva for SaaS backup, and Jira Service Management as our global ITSM platform. Scripting and automation are carried out primarily in PowerShell against the Microsoft Graph API.

Key Responsibilities

• Take ownership of the local IT infrastructure, endpoints and networks, ensuring availability, security and performance
• Provide 1st and 2nd line support and act as the local escalation point for the global service desk.
• Administer Microsoft 365, Entra ID and Intune day-to-day (user lifecycle, licensing, device compliance, app protection policies, Conditional Access changes under approved change control).
• Triage and respond to Microsoft Defender alerts, coordinating with MMI Security and our managed SOC where required.
• Operate and maintain Cisco Meraki networks at the Chipata office and remote sites, including LAN, Wi-Fi and SD-WAN configuration.
• Lead the local delivery of global IT projects, standards and change programmes.
• Maintain accurate asset, licence and configuration records, and produce clear runbooks and knowledge base articles in Confluence.
• Manage backups (Druva) and validate restore capability against defined RPO/RTO.
• Support the development of any future Trainee IT Engineer (apprentice) and contribute to their professional development.
• Uphold Mary’s Meals safeguarding standards and information security policies at all times

About You

You are a pragmatic, service-minded IT professional with a strong operational mindset and a drive for continuous improvement. You are confident troubleshooting across cloud identity, endpoint management and networking, and you communicate technical concepts clearly to non-technical colleagues. You work methodically, document as you go, and are comfortable operating in a distributed, sometimes bandwidth-constrained environment. You share our mission and our values of simplicity, service and stewardship.

Essential

Qualifications, skills and experience

• A relevant degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering or a related field, or equivalent demonstrable experience
• Minimum 3 years’ hands-on experience in an IT infrastructure or systems administration role in a business or non-profit environment
• Demonstrable administrative experience of Microsoft 365 — Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Teams admin centres, not solely as an end-user
• Demonstrable administrative experience of Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD): user and group management, Conditional Access, MFA, licence assignment and break-glass account practice
• Practical experience administering Microsoft Intune: device enrolment, compliance policies, configuration profiles, and app protection policies for BYOD
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (alert triage, device isolation, response actions) and Defender for Office 365
• Practical networking skills — LAN, Wi-Fi, VLANs, DHCP, DNS — with hands-on experience of a cloud-managed platform (Cisco Meraki strongly preferred)
• Demonstrable experience working to SLAs in an ITSM tool (Jira Service Management, ServiceNow, Freshservice or equivalent), and a working understanding of ITIL practices
• PowerShell scripting for day-to-day administration (Exchange Online, Entra ID, Microsoft Graph). You should be able to walk through a real script you have written
• Hands-on experience with a SaaS backup product (Druva, AvePoint, Veeam for M365 or equivalent), including test restores
• Strong troubleshooting discipline, clear written documentation, and excellent stakeholder communication in English

Desirable

• Current, role-based Microsoft certifications: MD-102 (Endpoint Administrator), MS-102 (Microsoft 365 Administrator), SC-300 (Identity and Access Administrator) or AZ-104 (Azure Administrator)
• Cisco CCNA and/or Meraki CMNA, or CompTIA Network+ or Security+ as entry-level equivalents
• Exposure to Microsoft Purview (sensitivity labels, DLP) and to data classification programmes
• Exposure to Teams Phone / Direct Routing or other cloud telephony
• Experience of the non-profit or international development sector, or of supporting users in geographically distributed, bandwidth-constrained environments
• Familiarity with Confluence for documentation and Atlassian Cloud tooling more broadly

How We Will Assess You

Longlisted candidates will be invited to complete a short technical questionnaire (approximately 30 minutes) covering Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Intune, Defender, networking and PowerShell. Shortlisted candidates will attend an interview that includes a short presentation. Please be prepared to discuss specific examples of your work — including tools and versions used — rather than general familiarity.

Practical information

• Location: Mary’s Meals Zambia national office, Chipata
• Reporting line: locally to the Head of Services (MMZ), with a functional line into MMI’s Head of Infrastructure & Operations
• Travel and hours: the role includes regular support visits to MMZ field offices in Eastern and Northern Provinces, occasional out-of-hours scheduled work and participation in on-call support

Important notes

• Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted, and only through the official Mary’s Meals email address
• Mary’s Meals is an equal-opportunities employer and welcomes applications from suitably qualified candidates regardless of background
• Mary’s Meals is committed to safeguarding, and we expect all staff to share this commitment. All appointments are subject to satisfactory references and background checks
• Mary’s Meals does not charge any fees at any stage of the recruitment process

For more information about Mary’s Meals and our work, please visit https://www.marysmeals.org.