Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Languages
Interests
Work Availability
Quote
Accomplishments
Affiliations
Work Preference
Software
Websites
Timeline
Generic

Koogen Govender

Group IT Infrastructure Manager
Durban,KZN

Summary

With an extensive career spanning 22 years in the industry, I have established myself as a highly skilled and experienced Group IT Infrastructure Manager. Throughout my journey, I have consistently demonstrated a deep understanding of enterprise systems and a passion for driving technological innovation within organizations. As a Group IT Infrastructure Manager, I have played a pivotal role in the design, implementation, and maintenance of complex enterprise solutions. Leveraging my broad expertise, I have successfully integrated diverse technologies, streamlined processes, and optimized infrastructure to enhance operational efficiency and support business growth. Over the years, I have developed a strong proficiency in various areas, including network architecture, server administration, virtualization, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. This comprehensive skill set has enabled me to effectively lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams, ensuring seamless integration of IT systems and alignment with organizational goals. My ability to analyze and identify business requirements has been instrumental in driving technology roadmaps and spearheading large-scale IT initiatives. By leveraging emerging trends and best practices, I have consistently delivered innovative solutions that have had a tangible impact on operational excellence and cost optimization. Furthermore, I have a proven track record of successfully managing complex projects from inception to completion, adhering to strict timelines and budgetary constraints. My expertise in project management methodologies, coupled with effective communication and stakeholder engagement skills, has allowed me to deliver results while fostering strong relationships with both internal and external stakeholders. In summary, my 22-year tenure as an Engineer reflects my deep commitment to excellence and continuous professional growth. My blend of technical expertise, leadership abilities, and a results-driven approach has empowered organizations to achieve their strategic objectives and thrive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. I am currently the Group IT Infrastructure Manager for FPT and manage a Team Local in SA and Abroad.

Overview

27
27
years of professional experience
14
14
years of post-secondary education
64
64
Certifications

Work History

Group IT Infrastructure Manager

FPT
10.2016 - Current
  • Team Management: maintaining a positive work and team environment, managing, and supervising the IT teams in South Africa and Mozambique, assigning tasks and projects, implementing, and developing strategies to maximize team performance and productivity, and ensuring that team members are executing their tasks as per their KPI's and FPT's standards
  • Targets and Goals: setting departmental goals, ensuring that all team members are meeting their daily, weekly, and monthly targets, taking corrective action where necessary, and conduct performance evaluations.
  • Collaboration: collaborate with internal and external departments to ensure that employees have the necessary hardware and software resources to succeed in their roles and that projects are completed within time and budget.
  • Training and Development: providing training on new technology, systems, coaching, and development opportunities to assist the team members to strengthen and develop their skills.
  • Risk Management: implement periodic risk assessments, initiate risk control, and ensure that all company information is stored and protected against security attacks and compromise.
  • IT Audits: perform regular IT audits to discover areas of weaknesses and fortify them.
  • Asset Management: implementing, maintaining, and updating the asset register to ensure that all FPT's hardware and equipment are accounted for.
  • Supplier Management: manage relationships with all hardware and software suppliers ensuring that FPT receives the best prices and service.
  • Purchasing Management: procurement and sourcing of hardware, software, and consumables.
  • Budgets: manage the IT department's budget to ensure that resources are being used efficiently.
  • Policies and Procedures: Ensure that all employees comply with IT processes, policies, and procedures.
  • Reporting: provide accurate reports on IT projects, infrastructure, risks, and needs.

Group Enterprise Engineer

FPT
10.2016 - Current
  • Provides leadership on large projects spanning onsite and remote business and technical teams.
  • Analyze existing systems, develop artifacts, and establish, implement and maintain specific systems, while monitoring and supervising systems performance.
  • Prepare business documentation and conduct user training.
  • Custom design specific solutions for the enterprise and user needs, to support business processes, provide specific technical awareness, insight, and documentation as appropriate to departments and users.
  • Perform extensive enterprise-level 3 and 4 support for the Group of Companies.
  • Ensure that systems continue to function normally through maintenance and change control, execute production failure trouble shooting.
  • Work with other solution design engineers, architects, and other cross-functional IT professionals to design Solutions and enhancements and to fulfil enterprise objectives and needs.
  • Liaise with business /stakeholders on project status, proposals and technical issues.
  • Design and develop solutions/models as applicable.
  • Prepare reports or correspondence concerning project specifications, activities, or status.
  • Store, retrieve, and manipulate data for analysis of capabilities and requirements, generate useful and actionable business insights.
  • Complete special projects as assigned. Manage and Maintain the Companies Hybrid Multicloud Environment.

Senior Network Engineer

FPT
10.2016 - 12.2017
  • I currently Manage and Maintain the Groups WAN/LAN Data Centers in Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Centurion.
  • Setup and Troubleshooting Of Active Directory environment.
  • Setup and Troubleshooting Of Microsoft Exchange environment server 2010/2016 co-existence.
  • Setup and Troubleshooting Of SAN and storage related issues.
  • Setup and Troubleshooting and upgrade Server Hardware. (HP/DELL/IBM)
  • Setup and Maintain existing Cisco ASA 5512 and 5505 Firewalls.
  • Setting up VLANs and inter VLAN routing.
  • Setup of SAN/FC Switch/iscsi (HP/Dell/IBM)
  • Exchange 2010/2013/2016.
  • Advanced experience in managing virtualised server installations and data storage sub-systems.
  • Advanced experience in managing complex LAN, WAN networking environments.
  • Advanced experience in managing Server Operating Systems and Active Directory.
  • Advanced Server systems administration - Hardware and Software.
  • Advanced Networking - routing, switching, firewalls and general networking experience.
  • Advanced Active Directory.
  • Advanced DNS administration.
  • Advanced Virtulization technologies including VMware.
  • In-depth knowledge of Microsoft Server Products including MS Server, Exchange, SharePoint, MS SQL.
  • Strong Linux Administration.
  • Solid understanding of Cloud Based technologies.

IT Operations Engineer

CCI South Africa
01.2012 - 10.2016
  • My current job role entails System Administration of the following,Asterisk SIP Server Administration,Linux Monitoring Servers,TFTP Phone configuration Servers.Veeam Backup Vmware vCenter 5.1,HP Tape Library,Dell Servers,HP Servers,Qnap,Kaspersky Anti Virus,Mimecast,Cisco Switches and Routers (3750, 6500, 2960),Exchange 2010,Server 2003 and 2008,Cacti,Unix and Linux Servers,DNS Bind,Ops Manager,Terminal Servers.
  • Perform daily system monitoring, verifying the integrity and availability of all hardware, server resources, systems and key processes, reviewing system and application logs, and verifying completion of scheduled jobs such as backups.
  • Perform regular security monitoring to identify any possible intrusions.
  • Perform daily backup operations, ensuring all required file systems and system data are successfully backed up to the appropriate media, recovery tapes or disks are created, and media is recycled and sent off site if necessary.
  • Create, change, and delete user accounts per request.
  • Provide Tier III/other support per request from various constituencies. Investigate and troubleshoot issues.
  • Repair and recover from hardware or software failures. Coordinate and communicate with impacted constituencies.

IT Team Leader (Service Desk)

CCI South Africa
01.2012 - 07.2012
  • Manage the performance of services to customers (24 x 7, 365 days per year), ensure that service levels are achieved in line with contracts and that customers expectations are met or exceeded.
  • Ultimate responsibility for ownership of all customers incidents or logged service requests.
  • Track the incidents to conclusion in line with SLAs and quality standards.
  • Manage critical customers incidents, associated to customer communication, activities and any appropriate escalations.
  • Provide information about incidents analysis and KPIs.
  • Build services relationship with customers and conduct service reviews for key customers. Review performance reports, service improvements, service quality and processes.
  • Provide management and performance reports.

IT Team Leader

Bizworks
10.2005 - 01.2012
  • I lead a team of 6 engineer's onsite. I am also in charge of all IT infrastructure planning and maintenance from Bizworks to Plusnet in London and the offices in Sheffield UK.
  • I maintain the existing network and maintain extensive security within our LAN and WAN environment.
  • I have extensive Cisco, Avaya PABX, VMware 3.0 Windows Server 2003, Exchange 2003, Avaya Predictive Dialer, NICE, CMS, Witness Recording and PIX firewall and Cisco ASA Experience.
  • I am currently working on a new project to move our existing international VOIP and Telecommunications infrastructure over to Internet Solutions.
  • I have been planning this move for almost 2 months.
  • In terms of negotiations with vendors and Service Level agreements, I have a very strong understanding of budget constraints and I also have a very good relationship with all my vendors.
  • I have also helped the company in achieving ISO27001 Certification and I am fully in line with IT Security Best Practices.

Network Administrator

Cyber Computers
01.2001 - 01.2005
  • Technical installations Onsite and testing of hardware & software.
  • Administering various network designs:- Based on Linux Ver 9.0 and 8.0(Samba,Squid,Sendmail,Webmin Administartion Etc), Windows 2000 pro, Windows 2000/2003 Server ,Novell 5.0 and 6.0,Windows XP Pro, 98 and 95, Lotus Notes 6.0 in Conjunction with Domino Server (Setup & Maintain).
  • I also installed and supported Kerridge on HP Unix & Installed and supported clients as well.
  • I also did onsite support for clients when Technicians were unable to do so on a daily basis regarding networking and software issues.
  • I also configured clients for dial-up Connections, Proxy Servers, ADSL, ISDN, Diginet and RAS connections.
  • I also setup Email and Internet servers through linux routers and proxy Servers.

Senior Hardware and Software Technician

American Consulate General Durban
01.2001 - 01.2004
  • Installation of Network Media, Hubs, Routers.
  • Troubleshooting Network problems And maintaining the Network (Win 2000 Server/Nt 4.0).
  • This position was based on a call out basis only whilst working for Cyber Computers.

Computer Installations & Network Maintenance

01.1998 - 12.1999
  • Setup and Installations of Workstations, Field Support Technician and Software Troubleshooting.

Education

Certificate in Cloud Computing for Business Managers - undefined

MANCOSA
01.2023 - 01.2033

Certificate in Cyber Security - Cyber/Computer Forensics and Counterterrorism

Harvard University

Earlington Secondary - undefined

Earlington Secondary
01.1990 - 01.1994

Pastel Accounting - Accounting and Finance

Careers 2000

ICDL - undefined

PC Training and Business College

Certificate in Avaya Mosiax Dialler Administration - Avaya Diallers

Telesto Communications

Avaya Call Manager - Avaya PBX

Dimension Data Sandton

Network Security Certificate - Network Security

Alison Distance Learning

JNCIA Junos Certified - Switching and Routing

Juniper

Certificate in IT Management - IT Management

University of Cape Town

Skills

Avaya PBX

undefined

Certification

Enterprise Cloud Administration (ECA) - Nutanix Exams

Languages

English
Bilingual or Proficient (C2)

Interests

Programming

Playing Soccer

Work Availability

monday
tuesday
wednesday
thursday
friday
saturday
sunday
morning
afternoon
evening
swipe to browse

Quote

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Voltaire

Accomplishments

  • AI Security & Governance Certified – Completed a certification with Securiti, enhancing my ability to implement secure AI frameworks.
  • Successful Cyber Security Campaign – Designed and delivered a Cyber Security Awareness program for FPT staff, covering key areas like phishing, MFA, and insider threats.
  • Mimecast & Microsoft 365 Tenant Separation – Led a strategic project to separate email and security infrastructure across tenants, ensuring business continuity and compliance.
  • FreeIPA Automation with Ansible – Leveraged Ansible Playbooks to streamline identity and access management in FreeIPA environments.
  • Network Optimization – Engineered a dual-firewall, dual-internet link setup with Sophos, FortiGate 80E, and Cisco Layer 3 for optimal load balancing and high availability.
  • Certified in DMARC Analyzer and Mimecast Awareness – Strengthened email security posture and awareness with industry-recognized certifications.
  • Microsoft Ecosystem Expert – Over 20 years’ experience in Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Exchange, GPOs, and PowerShell scripting.

Affiliations

  • Microsoft Ecosystem – Long-standing Practitioner & Contributor Over two decades of hands-on experience and implementation across M365, Azure, Entra ID, Exchange, and GPO environments.
  • Securiti – Certified in AI Security & Governance Recognized for knowledge and application of AI governance frameworks and secure data handling.
  • DMARC Analyzer – Certified Professional Helping organizations implement and maintain secure email authentication standards.
  • Mimecast – Awareness Training Certified Promoting security-first mindsets and email security best practices.

Work Preference

Work Type

Full Time

Work Location

On-SiteRemoteHybrid

Important To Me

Career advancementWork-life balanceCompany CultureFlexible work hoursPersonal development programsHealthcare benefitsPaid time offTeam Building / Company RetreatsPaid sick leaveWork from home option

Software

Microsoft 365 (M365) – Admin Center, Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, Intune

Azure & Entra ID – Identity management, conditional access, hybrid integrations

Windows Server (2008–2022) – Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy Objects (GPOs)

VMware vSphere & ESXi – Virtualization, VM provisioning, snapshot management

Hyper-V – Virtual machine management and performance optimization

Mimecast – Email security, threat protection, user awareness campaigns

FortiGate & Sophos UTM – Firewall configuration, VPN, web filtering

Cisco IOS (Router/Switch) – CLI configuration, routing, access lists

Nessus & OpenVAS – Vulnerability scanning and reporting

Metasploit & Kali Linux Tools – Penetration testing and ethical hacking

PowerShell – Automation for M365, AD, Exchange, and Windows environments

PRTG Network Monitor – Uptime monitoring, SNMP, performance dashboards

SolarWinds – Network and server health monitoring

ManageEngine – Endpoint management, IT helpdesk, log analysis

Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook) – Advanced use and automation

Teams / Zoom / Webex – Collaboration tools for meetings, webinars, and training

SharePoint Online & OneDrive – Content management and secure file sharing

Bash/Shell Scripting – Linux server automation and task scheduling

Securitiai – AI governance and privacy operations platform

Timeline

Certificate in Cloud Computing for Business Managers - undefined

MANCOSA
01.2023 - 01.2033

Group IT Infrastructure Manager

FPT
10.2016 - Current

Group Enterprise Engineer

FPT
10.2016 - Current

Senior Network Engineer

FPT
10.2016 - 12.2017

IT Operations Engineer

CCI South Africa
01.2012 - 10.2016

IT Team Leader (Service Desk)

CCI South Africa
01.2012 - 07.2012

IT Team Leader

Bizworks
10.2005 - 01.2012

Network Administrator

Cyber Computers
01.2001 - 01.2005

Senior Hardware and Software Technician

American Consulate General Durban
01.2001 - 01.2004

Computer Installations & Network Maintenance

01.1998 - 12.1999

Earlington Secondary - undefined

Earlington Secondary
01.1990 - 01.1994

Certificate in Cyber Security - Cyber/Computer Forensics and Counterterrorism

Harvard University

Pastel Accounting - Accounting and Finance

Careers 2000

ICDL - undefined

PC Training and Business College

Certificate in Avaya Mosiax Dialler Administration - Avaya Diallers

Telesto Communications

Avaya Call Manager - Avaya PBX

Dimension Data Sandton

Network Security Certificate - Network Security

Alison Distance Learning

JNCIA Junos Certified - Switching and Routing

Juniper

Certificate in IT Management - IT Management

University of Cape Town
Koogen GovenderGroup IT Infrastructure Manager