IT Director - Resort

Welcome to the Kalahari Experience 

At Kalahari Resorts & Conventions, we don’t just create vacations—we craft unforgettable experiences. Home to America’s Largest Indoor Waterparks, our African-inspired resorts offer world-class dining, luxurious spas, thrilling entertainment, and cutting-edge convention centers that redefine hospitality.

But we’re more than a resort. As a major employer, we provide thousands of jobs and career growth opportunities while delivering exceptional service. Our associates take care of millions of guests each year, making every visit special.

Beyond our walls, we’re making a difference. Through our partnership with charity: water, we’re committed to bringing clean water to one million people in Africa.

IT Director

We’re seeking a highly skilled, on-site IT Director to join our Information Technology team at Kalahari Resorts & Conventions. In this key leadership role, you will be ensuring a secure, stable, reliable, operational and guest ready technology experience across all departments.

This position plays a critical role in architecting, analyzing, developing, enhancing, testing, installing, implementing, monitoring, operating, maintaining, and supporting a wide range of back of hours as well as guest- facing applications/systems, devices, audio and visual equipment, end-user computers, infrastructure environments, analytical and data platforms, while managing and mentoring a high-performing team.  

We’re searching for a seasoned IT leader with deep technical knowledge and proven team management experience. The ideal candidate brings both strategic vision and a hands-on approach, capable of translating business needs into IT solutions that will contribute to the entire Kalahari experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day operations and long-term planning for resort technology.
• Manage a team responsible for application support, infrastructure, equipment & device management, back of house and guest-facing technologies.
• Support and enhance various 3rd party and custom software applications such as POS, PMS, CRS, Payments, Food & Beverage, Catering, Spa, Inventory Management, Financial and Marketing CRM.
• Oversee version upgrades, patching and configuration of newly installed software rollouts across operational applications and environments partnering with the necessary infrastructure and IT Security Enterprise teams.
• Collaborate with business units to gather requirements, research technical options, design, architect and implement solutions in a timely delivery.
• Leverage a solid understanding of business operations combined with prior IT experiences and knowledge to triage and provide resolution of technical issues and problems.
• Maintain compliance with IT security protocols, payments industry and data privacy standards (PCI, PII, SOX, GDPR, CCPA, access rights/SSO etc.).
• Manage, prioritize and direct the daily activities of IT associates, including third-party vendors and service providers.
• Participate in an on-call rotation and remain available to work flexible hours, including off-hours, holidays and weekends.
• Travel occasionally to support IT operations at other resort locations.

 

Qualifications & Experience

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, IT, MIS, or a related technology field is preferred; or equivalent professional technology experience (10+ years) such as technical IT engineering, application, architecture and/or software development and/or training or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Proven leadership experience managing IT teams and technical projects.
• A background in hospitality, entertainment, gaming, restaurant or retail industries in IT environment is strongly preferred.
• Experience with hospitality-related technologies: applications, equipment, devices, infrastructure hardware, data platforms/environments, tablets, kiosks, payment devices.
• Knowledge of server/workstation OS (Windows, Linux), back-end application database technologies (i.e., SQL Server), application and data integrations resulting in flow of transactional & other critical operational data (i.e., API’s), data warehouses that produce critical business reporting and intelligence (i.e., financial), analytical data platforms and models for the organization (i.e., Snowflake), and Martech applications (i