Director, Software Solutions

Director

The opportunity has arisen for a new post to bring three teams together to form an integrated, cohesive function focused on delivering cost-effective services to BSP’s Customer Services and Programme/Projects teams and, through them, to our wider customer base. This unified team will seek opportunities to join up the hitherto separate strands of technical development yet recognise that the demands of supporting the big package solutions are different from delivering small departmental applications in a rapid and cost-effective way and different again from supporting and integrating services with our web CMS.

The Director will contribute in a large way to the strategic technical direction of BSP. The expectation is that the post holder will be experienced and totally comfortable with an approach involving Microsoft, Oracle, Java and web technologies, yet wedded to none. A broader understanding of general current and emerging technologies is also expected.

People, communication and change management skills are required as are proven abilities in the areas of estimation, quality assurance and performance measurement. The combined team will contain around 20 staff.

Essential selection criteria

  • The post holder will be educated to degree level or equivalent
  • This is a senior post which requires significant software development experience gained at director or senior management level, either in a commercial or public sector/higher education organisation with a complex ICT environment. Experience of running a department within a directorate and contributing to the management of the directorate is expected as is a strong customer service ethos
  • The post holder should be able to think and plan strategically and to possess the vision required to fashion the systems architecture and technical solutions which will underpin the future requirements of business applications. They will be able to plan capacity and manage the efficient and effective delivery of the service
  • The person should be conversant with the future direction of our enterprise systems and how the direction will impact the University, supported by an up-to-date knowledge of best practice and all relevant legislation and interpretations that impact in this area of ICT
  • They will be able to accurately estimate development tasks and to develop and maintain code and quality standards. They will develop key performance indicators and measure the performance of the department against them. Competency levels by skill will be assessed and inform resource planning and staff development decisions
  • The person will have strong technical, people management and service-oriented skills and will understand the concepts of application life cycle management and seek ways of improving BSP’s approach to that area. The role requires strong communication skills and political awareness so as to enable the post holder to work with, influence and communicate effectively to a wide range of technical and non-technical staff and stakeholders

Related links