Deputy Director Cloud Infrastructure, Enterprise Services, DDaT, Corporate Enablers - HO - SCS1

Location

Manchester, Sheffield or Liverpool, with regular travel expected to London

About the job

Job summary

The Deputy Director – Cloud Infrastructure, Enterprise Services is a new and critical role within both Enterprise Services and wider Home Office Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) department.  The Home Office DDaT portfolio is one of the most complex technology functions within government, with 4,500 resources delivering for more than 300 complex change programmes and maintaining hundreds of mission critical systems.

Enterprise Services is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining digital services and solution for cross cutting functions within the department. Our team is delivering the core technology needed for the department’s future development, designing appropriate solutions, delivering quickly and effectively and making a real difference in achieving wider DDaT and organisational strategies and objectives.

Job description

DDaT currently use a combination of “on Premise” and Cloud Based infrastructure to deliver its services including Critical National Infrastructure. While the majority of the on Premise work sits within an existing SCS PB1 role, the oversight of our Cloud provision and strategy sits across multiple parts of DDaT. The Deputy Director – Cloud Infrastructure will make a significant contribution to the Home Office DDaT delivery through the effective creation of strategic cloud platforms delivery organisation including the delivery of ongoing BAU cloud infrastructure operations. This new organisation will be able to align Home Office cloud strategies and ensure we receive value for money across the multiple platforms and providers. A key element of this role is delivery of capability and capacity for the programmes, projects and platform tenants within the Home Office supporting them with the platform functionality required to deliver the new and existing operational services from the systems being developed and operated. This will be delivered utilising a team of Engineers, delivery and project managers, delivery partners, service management, cyber assurance, quality assurance, delivery management, product management and business management functions to ensure the service runs to budget and that project delivery is on time and to the quality required. An early priority for this role will be to define and shape the role, in alignment with the Digital First programme and to identify key priorities. They will need to design and build the team, including establishing a strong team culture and ensure smooth transitions and strong stakeholder engagement throughout. As this role will have significant working across portfolios they will need to collaborate and embed new ways of working to ensure alignment with broader business objectives.

The appointee must be able to work in a complex multi-cloud environment with competing priorities and multiple stakeholders.  It is therefore critical that the applicant has direct and relevant experience in the delivery and management of complex technical programs across multiple private and public cloud services. The role is highly technical but will be supported by a strong technology, delivery, service, cyber, quality assurance, product and change teams, the appointee will require a sufficient level of knowledge and experience to deliver an ambitious strategic cloud delivery programme of some complexity, underpinning and enabling the delivery of coherent and supportable Home Office cloud services whilst also delivering existing cloud services to Critical National Infrastructure levels.

In several areas, we are partnering with third-party providers to deliver the services that we need. It is therefore important that the Deputy Director is comfortable working on significant commercial agreements (above £100m) and driving the delivery of a large cross section of vendors in the mode of delivery partner, as well as a buyer, in a modern DevOps Agile delivery method. The job holder will be responsible for the financial and planning aspects of activity with our suppliers, ensuring that our level of funding and resourcing matches our expected deliverables and maximises the value for money within our supply chain.

The Cloud Infrastructure teams are currently undergoing a transformation in how we provide services to our customers, moving from a traditional technology delivery function with separation between development and operational teams to one of multi-disciplinary teams, working in an Agile manner against a business-critical prioritised delivery pipeline and supported by product management.

Finally, the job holder will need to work closely with portfolios in the wider DDaT team to ensure that inter-dependent delivery work streams that impact other parts of the business are understood both in terms of dependencies and timescales, determining and agreeing timeframes and cost estimates whilst ensuring that all parties achieve delivery and financial management objectives.

Person specification

Key responsibilities include:

• Lead the development and implementation of cloud infrastructure strategies, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and objectives.
• Oversee the design, deployment, and management of cloud infrastructure solutions, including public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.
• Ensure the security, scalability, and reliability of cloud infrastructure, implementing best practices and industry standards.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including IT, security, and application development, to ensure seamless integration and operation of cloud services.
• Build, manage and mentor a team of cloud infrastructure engineers, delivery and project managers, delivery partners, service managers, cyber assurance, quality assurance, delivery management, product management and business management staff, providing guidance and support to ensure their professional growth and development.
• Develop and maintain policies, procedures, and documentation related to multi-cloud infrastructure management.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in cloud computing, and make recommendations for continuous improvement.
• Manage vendor relationships and negotiate contracts to ensure the best value for the organization. 

Essential Criteria  

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate their knowledge, experience, capability and behavioural approach to a high standard against the following key criteria:

• Having supported an organisation of similar size and scope in its transition to a service provision approach, including first-hand experience of having planned and overseen a full programme life cycle from a legacy technology stack to full operational run state;
• Having delivered multiple complex, high-value programs in a relevant technology landscape, and showing exceptional programme planning and delivery capability, with experience of maximising appropriate frameworks and methodologies in support of delivery;
• Great partnership skills: in particular, a track record of building highly effective partnerships with peers, stakeholders and commercial partners across large-scale organisations;
• Strong financial management experience relating to high value programme delivery. Experience of developing and securing support for associated annual budgets and operating plans.
• Exceptional leader of people, able to build high performing, passionate, delivery-focused teams and support and coach managers to achieve optimum outcomes.

Desirable skills and experience:

• Robust, collaborative and driven, able to work with multiple parties to deliver complex and fast paced programmes of work;
• First-class relationship builder, able to form strong working relationships with a diverse number of stakeholders to communicate and secure support for vision, delivery and rollout;
• Agile and flexible, responds well to change. Can balance objectives and redeploy people and resources as priorities shift; Exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Able to exploit different channels and formats to reach different audiences.