SC Cleared – Head of Infrastructure

Middleware Systems

Role: Head of Infrastructure

Job Type: Contract/Permanent

Duration: 6 months

Work Location: London, United Kingdom

*Looking Only For Active Security Clearance**

Head of Infrastructure.

• This is both a technical and a people management role.
• You will be responsible for day to day management of the team and for defining roles and responsibilities.
• You will develop your team through sharing information effectively, coaching, and communicating a clear vision to ensure that your staff are productive, engaged, and motivated to deliver the area’s aims.
• This will include setting clear goals and smart stretching objectives that are aligned to those of the team, division, and directorate.
• You will also be responsible for managing all staff-related matters that may arise including performance, absence, and sickness.
• The Domain Lead will possess deep technical expertise and display authority across a variety of infrastructure technologies, including networks, compute, storage, backup, and voice.
• The role requires involvement in technical decision-making, both during BAU incidents and in long-term strategic design decisions.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership – the Head of Infrastructure will have five areas directly reporting into them: Networks, Compute/Storage, Infrastructure Solution Design, Infrastructure Delivery and Voice.
The Infrastructure domain has approximately 35 permanent staff directly aligned to it, plus third-party partnerships where needed.
The Domain Lead is accountable for the performance and results of the domain.
Domain Leads form the senior management team with the Infrastructure and Service division and effective contribution at this level is a key requirement of the role.

Domain Management & Strategic Partner Management – Leading the performance of the domain and any partners by driving delivery to time, cost, and quality. Ensuring alignment between supply and demand and continual improvement of services.

Domain Strategy and Technology Sourcing – Accountable for our Infrastructure technical roadmap, ensuring clear and effective processes are in place to ensure successful delivery.
The Domain Lead will be expected to provide specialist technical advice beyond Divisional and Directorate boundaries.
The Domain Lead determines the appropriate sourcing model(s) for the domain and is accountable for the integration of wider industry best practices and technologies into the Bank’s way of working.
Key drivers are to re-use, rationalise and reduce complexity within each domain.

Domain Finances, Contracts & Commercial Capability – Primary contact for reviewing contracts, pricing & commercial models against business requirements, and for closing out any gaps.

Manage and maintain all aspects of domain finances and drive strategic changes and optimisation to create efficiencies.

The role is both contract owner and vendor manager for key Bank suppliers, such as Cisco, BT and Broadcom.

Domain Delivery – Responsible for strategic decision-making over delivery, engagement models and methodologies to ensure success for the customer.

This includes all aspects of resource planning and forecasting, ensuring the domain has appropriate resources, skills, capabilities, and culture to deliver world-class service for the Bank.

Domain Operations & Application Maintenance – Support strong operational performance for domain technologies through effective operational support processes.

Engage with the Service Managers to enable continuous improvement. Manage the Keep the Lights On investment plan to address obsolescence and other technical risks. Manage domain issues, risks, audit and compliance obligations, and ensure remediation and/or mitigation plans are in place and delivered.

o Help develop a unified front door for all internal and external stakeholders to submit work to Infrastructure.
o Help delivery leads Optimise resource capacity management
o Manage Infrastructure Estate Hygiene:
o Costs: budgetary controls and timesheet submission
o Risk: Infrastructure risk controls and mitigation planning
o Audit: Support Infrastructure audit controls and reporting
o Patching: Support infrastructure patching and upgrades
o Maturity – Plan training & consulting services with Infra vendors
o Incident – Tier 1 response
o Change – complex change assurance (high impact/risk)
o Problem – cross-cutting issues (eg OTV errors, performance issues, vendor relationship management)

Risk Management:

• Infrastructure risk management in alignment with new Technology Risk Working Group
• Support implementation of security controls across Legacy estate
• Support risk-based vulnerability management
• Support obsolescence risk management
• Support technical debt reduction

Role Requirements Essential Skills/Competencies

• Highly experienced in the management of complex delivery programs alongside operational support accountabilities.
• Ability to work under pressure in an environment where balancing supply and demand is sometimes challenging.
• Proven, deep technical experience in at least one of the areas of Network, Compute, Storage and Voice, with good knowledge of the other areas.
• Familiarity with industry-standard infrastructure products and vendors such as Cisco, Checkpoint, F5, Broadcom, EMC, Commvault etc.
• Proven to be adept at balancing supply (resource capacity) against demand of varying sizes – service support, large scale investment projects, and small change requests.
• Previous experience in a senior Infrastructure leadership position, including shaping of, and delivery against, a strategic plan.
• Direct experience of IT budgetary and financial management.
• Strong customer focus and an excellent ability to manage customer relationships; understand requirements and expectations, and translate these into technical deliverables with defined acceptance criteria.
• Positive leadership, employee engagement and motivation.
• Adept at stakeholder communications, from senior director-level briefings through to domain-wide engagement events.
• Proven ability to develop and manage partner relationships and large development teams to drive optimum performance.
• Experience in leading strategic negotiations to successful outcomes.
• A broad and deep understanding of best practice in applying appropriate processes, technologies, and resources to best protect and improve domain solutions. Proven awareness of relevant industry technologies to ensure a strategic vision and direction is maintained within the domain.
• Experienced in managing risk, compliance, audit and security obligations, including disaster recovery and business continuity procedures.
• Previous experience in agile delivery methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban or Lean, including conducting and participating in Agile ceremonies such as spring planning, daily stand-ups, spring reviews and retrospectives.

Technical Skills and Requirements

Professionally qualified in IT management or with equivalent industry experience.
Significant commercial experience and/or relevant level qualification in vendor management/supply chain management.
Strong IT, commercial, contract, and partner management knowledge and experience.
Deep technical understanding of IT Infrastructure gained through proven delivery of solutions in this space.
Knowledge of ITIL and other industry-wide initiatives that promote quality and process improvement.
Proven skills in aligning IT with organizational drivers.
Experience in resource and workload management.
Experience in budget control.
Experience of managing third parties and outsourced services.
Industry awareness to identify improvement opportunities and implement them across the services and processes incorporated within the domain.
General knowledge of all areas of IT Applications and Infrastructure.
Detailed understanding of processes and systems within the domain of expertise.