Lead Platform/Cloud Engineer - IT Services - 4718 - Grade 8

Position Details

IT Services

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £43,414 to £51,805, with potential progression once in post to £58,284

Grade 8

Full Time, Permanent

Closing date: 1st December 2022

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

The University of Birmingham is a global institution working within a diverse and vibrant City, offering an inspiring education to our students, and undertaking critically important research. We are a place of open, critical thinking, and the creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge.

Professional Services play a crucial role in this by providing outstanding support to our researchers, enable an exceptional educational experience for our students, and help the University to grow its influence regionally, nationally, and globally. They ensure the University's resources are used wisely, manage and improve the infrastructure which sits at the heart of the institution, and support decision to be made quickly and based on sound evidence

Our Birmingham Professional programme operates across the University, supporting colleagues to network and collaborate, offering opportunities to learn and develop, contributing to the delivery of the University's objectives, and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work.

The role of IT Services is to ensure that the University of Birmingham community has access to responsive, resilient, secure and accessible systems and support. Our technologies enable our students, staff, researchers, visitors, and partners to confidently and creatively use digital services, technology, and data for the benefit of their learning, teaching, research or work.

IT Services are building a culture of innovation, collaboration, openness, and inclusivity, and we apply the principles of customer focus and continuous improvement to everything we do. We want to attract outstanding, inspirational, and talented people, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. Our IT Services division has an active People and Culture network and Women in IT group, bi-annual making IT happen awards recognition programme, and Social Committee which arranges regular activities and events for colleagues.

With a new Digital Strategy , this is an exciting opportunity to join the team making IT happen at the University of Birmingham

Job summary

Increasingly The University of Birmingham needs to operate and compete at unprecedented speeds and scale as competitors and technologies are advancing. Cloud is the most value-creating technology of our time and is the foundation for the universities digital strategy that is driving profound changes in how the business operates, competes, and creates value for all stakeholders.

This role will guide a small team of infrastructure/cloud engineers and will also need to have a close working relationship with internal and external partners to review a range of existing services to determine the best infrastructure platform and upgrade path. This could include simply upgrading services on premise in our private cloud, or migration to a public cloud provider.

Main duties

• Lead the development of automation pipelines for the deployment, upgrade, and development of new IT services in the cloud.
• Mentoring and leading others in the team of engineers to deliver work to specific deadlines
• Reviewing a wide range of existing University services to determine the best upgrade path.
• Working in tandem with several internal and external stakeholders (services owners, Core Infrastructure, 3rd party suppliers) to identify, optimise and implement, through automation, the most appropriate infrastructure platform (private or public cloud-based) solutions for the University of Birmingham.
• Regularly reviewing existing systems and making recommendations for improvements.
• Identifying, analysing, and resolving infrastructure vulnerabilities and application deployment issues.
• Managing cloud services in accordance with IT Services governance & security guidelines.
• Stakeholder management, ensuring effective liaison with service owners, external partners and boards as appropriate.
• Educate teams on the implementation of new cloud-based initiatives, providing associated training as required.
• Define and document best practices and strategies regarding service deployment and infrastructure maintenance.
• Leading the team to ensure agreed deliverables are met within specified timeframes
• Providing regular reports and updates of progress to line managers and other senior colleagues within IT Services.
• Maintain an up-to-date knowledge of cloud methodologies and technologies.
• Actively manages equality, diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour.
• Supports the University's sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.
• Any other duties commensurate with the grade.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Educated to degree level or equivalent qualification plus substantial work experience in a relevant technical/scientific and/or management/supervisory role in a specialist area. A higher degree may also be held. Where no equivalent qualification is held a proven track record of extensive and substantial work experience in a series of progressively more demanding and relevant roles will be required
• An in depth up-to-date technical knowledge of several of the following is essential
• Windows Server
• SQL Server Administration
• Cloud Technologies (including Microsoft Azure SQL, Azure SQL elastic pool, Azure Compute Services, Terraform, GitHub)
• Experience of building and maintaining complex IT services in the Azure cloud and its associated services. Including experience of using Azure PaaS (platforms as a service)
• Experience of mentoring and supporting the development of junior engineers
• Experience of using continuous integration and continuous delivery systems for automate service deployments.
• Experience of agile methodologies and working in an agile team
• A strong customer service orientation, showing the ability to both understand/interpret end user requirements and articulate IT solutions that deliver on end user business requirements
• The ability to work effectively as a member of a team towards quality service goals and deadlines.
• The ability to effectively prioritise and schedule workloads
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal with both internal and external users.
• Evidence of literacy and numeracy.
• Experience of championing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in own work area.
• Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation, policies, procedures are applied.
• Ability to identify issues with the potential to impact on protected groups and take appropriate action.

Role context

Roles at this level will either be technical specialists operating at a very high specialist level as expert contributors or experienced functional/technical professionals with a broader knowledge across their discipline with managerial responsibility for the delivery or ownership of a service.

Core competencies/transferable skills

Working at this level you will be able to develop and successfully demonstrate the core competencies/transferable skills outlined in each of the areas shown below. You will be expected to take ownership for getting things done, including calling on or joining others to assist. You will be expected to be flexible as required in supporting your department and wider University.

Planning and organising

• lead and manage a technical/IT/specialist team to deliver a service, balancing short term delivery with longer term planning horizons;
• determine priorities and allocate resources to meet planned objectives and requirements;
• monitor performance standards, taking appropriate actions to ensure service delivery is uniformly excellent
• ensure health and safety of the area and equipment/hardware;
• carry out project work including planning and delivering programmes of work to budget and deadline;
• advise on future requirements of, for example, equipment, apparatus, furniture and fittings, space;
• make a major contribution to the development of policies and procedures to ensure that all legislative and University requirements are met within the laboratories/workshops and work areas.

or

• make significant contributions to the design/development/application of services, techniques, specialist equipment or materials;
• design, plan and deliver programmes of specialist work;
• operate as a high level specialist - initiating and developing ideas/approaches, promoting and delivering innovative solutions.

Problem solving and decision making

• use analytical and problem solving skills to resolve specialist and technical issues; may be one of the few able to provide solutions in a specialised field;
• provide comprehensive advice and make innovative contributions.

Organisational understanding

• has an excellent understanding of own working area and a broad understanding of the contribution other areas make to the success of the University;
• has an excellent understanding of how the University operates, together with an understanding of how academia operates in the UK;
• demonstrates empathy with the academic endeavour and seeks to encourage others to do so.

Relationships and communication

• communicate clearly on technical or professional issues to non-specialists and senior level audiences and command their respect.
• represent the department at internal and external meetings/events/network with colleagues in other institutions to share best practice.

Informal enquires to Natalie Gibbons, email: N.Gibbons@bham.ac.uk

View our staff values and behaviours here

Valuing excellence, sustaining investment

We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working .