Head of Technical Services

£60k - £80k plus benefits

UK Based

Our client are a the leading provider of bespoke software to the Higher Education Sector. To support the planned growth the company are seeking an experienced Head of Technical Services. A key member of the senior management team, the role is needed to help further develop and then deliver against an ambitious and evolving Software and systems plan. You will be required to direct and oversee all aspects of client facing software and systems, including: - Managing and further developing the teams, both internal and external, that are responsible for developing, testing, releasing, running, and maintaining our growing suite of software applications. - Establishing the policies, processes and procedures that produce high-quality software and other IT services. - Driving the overall direction for our organisation's architecture and software development practice. - Working collaboratively with the other heads of the business to jointly deliver against business objectives.

Responsibilities

• Managing, resources and directing our team of analysts, designers, developers, test automation engineers, and sysops engineers.

• Consulting senior-level stakeholders across the organisation understanding business and technology needs matching the technology to the functional requirements.

• Assessing the business impact that certain technical choices may have and vice versa ensuring product owners are informed of the impact of their requirements on development.

• Ensuring smooth, high quality and consistent delivery and operation of Software services.

• Creating and embedding processes and standards for selection, implementation, and support of systems.

• Providing direction, guidance, and training to staff.

• Continually researching current and emerging technologies and proposing changes where needed or desirable.

• Proactively helping to identify and resolve difficult technical issues.

• Providing Software Architecture guidance to the product teams, assessing in place design and proposing solutions to improve it

• Overviewing current infrastructure, including AWS Cloud infrastructure, and CI/CD pipelines.

• Facilitating cross-collaboration and knowledge sharing between departments and teams

• Managing external software service providers.

• Ensuring compliance with company’s ISO27001 processes and policies.

Requirements:

• Develop technical aspects of the company’s strategy to ensure alignment with its business goals

• Discover and implement technologies and systems that meet strategic needs

• Supervise system infrastructure to ensure functionality and efficiency

• Build quality assurance and data protection processes

• Monitor KPIs and budgets to assess technological performance

• Use stakeholders’ feedback to inform necessary improvements and adjustments to technology

• Communicate and agree technology strategy to stakeholders

• Broad management skills to lead teams, as well as the ability to influence others outside of own job area regarding policies, procedures, and goals.

• Ability to handle changing priorities and to use good judgement when working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

• Experience working with customer facing, multi-tenant enterprise applications

• Experience working with enterprise infrastructure and cloud solutions

• Proven experience in engineering and software architecture design.

• Willingness and ability to learn new technology.

• Great teamwork, strong written and verbal communication and collaboration skills.

• Fifteen (15+) years of progressively responsible experience leading the development of enterprise applications.

• Ten (10+) years of management experience.

• Experience with deploying cloud applications at large scale in multiple geographies.

• Experience working in and complying with ISO27001.

Technologies, tools and methodologies currently used by the company include:

• Wagile

• TDD

• Symphony

• React

• Vue

• Drupal

• CodeCeption

• Xray

• Confluence

• AWS

• Kubernetes

• Docker

• Jira

• Gitlab
  

For the right candidate the company offers:

• Competitive SalPension Scheme

• Training – all Senior managers are provided with membership of the Institute of

• Leadership and Management and expected to complete the full suite of modules.

• Personal Development Plan and training

• Perkbox

• 20 days holiday increasing by a day every year of service

• Flexible working in hours or location

• The company fully supports equality and diversity and was short listed for SME

• Diversity Employer of the Year in 2019.

If you are interested in this vacancy and believe you have the necessary skills and experience to be successful, please send your CV to alex@planetrecruitment.co.uk or call 01865 257 455