Position - Head of Applications & Development Services

Location - Twickenham (Hybrid)

Salary - up to £72,000 + Benefits

We are partnered with a provider of higher education - Estalish in 1850 our client has a deep heritage in education with a strong reputation of teaching excellence and a student-focused approach.

Currently on an exciting journey of transformation and growth, our client is on the search for a new Head of Applications & Development Services to lead the support & development on a wide range of critical business platforms that underpin and support their core activities in partnership with academic areas, professional services teams and external partners.

With ambitious plans for transformation of many of thier core data and integration service technologies; a cloud first strategy and adopting new development and delivery process like DevOPS and Agile, this is a very exciting time for clients technology infrastructure.

Main Responsibilities:

Develop and implement the applications, reporting and solutions strategy, applications architecture and roadmaps across the whole lifecycle from selection, implementation, support and maintenance to decommissioning.
Develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that the quality, security, performance, maintainability and robustness of solutions is of a consistently high standard.
Lead, manage and develop the Applications & Development team to maximise productivity, ensure the skills pool is current and relevant to the requirements of the organisation, enhance job satisfaction, promote career development and implement effective succession planning.
Provide strong leadership and represent the Applications Support & Development team as part of the CIO senior management team.
Establish and maintain good working relationships with all relevant functions both within the CIO are and across the organisation. In particular ensure resource is provided to projects to maximise the effectiveness of resources and liaise with IT Services leads to ensure the smooth transition of development outputs into production.
Working as part of the IT Design Authority that reviews and authorises new system designs and major system changes.
Responsible for leading the establishment of a programme of upgrades across business systems, solutions and tools as captured in the application, reporting and technology roadmaps; including positive supplier management.
Responsible for delivery of a range of support and development activities related to regular and cyclical business requirements.
Responsible for resource planning of the team and the identification and resolution of potential resource conflicts across the programme of project work versus requirements of business as usual activities, upgrades and general support.
Responsible for the Applications & Development budget (circa £2m).
Responsible for effective supplier management across all platforms.

Skills, Knowledge and Experience:

Demonstrated experience and proficiency in multiple disciplines/technologies/processes related to the position including development, implementation, and maintenance of large-scale integrated systems across multiple hardware and software platforms.
Proven track record of designing, building and testing n-tier, multi-client, multi-platform software applications.
In depth, architect level technical knowledge backed up by leadership and commercial instinct.
Experience as an IT Solutions leader at management level with an understanding of business strategic direction within the Higher Education sector and future requirements.
Experience of initiating and delivering technology and business transformations at enterprise level.
Substantial experience in managing project, application and support teams and/or significant complex projects.
Excellent team development skills and experience in mentoring others in a leadership role, nurturing talent.
In depth experience and significant experience of leading on software & release management; quality & change control.
Successful track record of driving best practice ITIL based service delivery - Change, Release, Incident and Problem Management.
Expedience of influencing and proactively managing positive relationships with suppliers.
The ideal candidate would also have excellent technical knowledge across Applications, Middleware, Reporting, COTS, Databases, Web Technologies, Microsoft Power Platform; Customer/student records systems, online learning platforms; Experience of J2EE and .Net technologies, Redhat, VM, Linux , Unix, Windows.
Good knowledge of information security and data privacy best practises and legislation is also desirable.

This role is hybrid with three days based in their central London office and two days working from home, and the role comes with a generous salary up to £72,000 plus benefits.

For a confidential discussion - Apply now!