Head of Application and Product Operations Services

Job Description

Here at Highways England we are striving for excellence so if youre looking for a new opportunity to lead a high performing team in a progressive organisation please see below!Your new roleHighways England IT Department are embarking on a multimillion pound transformation programme that will enable Highways England to transform the way it operates by delivering digital, data and technology services from frontline to back office, in a modernand efficient way. To ensure the smooth delivery of the transformation programme the IT team are looking to recruit a Head of Applications to join the Service Operations team. The Service Operations team provide effective, efficient delivery and support ofIT services by defining, planning, leading and delivering the IT operations support strategy across the business in line with the overall Delivery Plan for Highways England.The Head of Applications will be accountable for managing the operational support and maintenance activities for applications and services. The role is accountable for performance, quality, availability management, disaster recovery / business continuityand continuous service improvement throughout the service lifecycle.As a flexible working organisation, we are pleased to offer the above roles from any of our Highways England offices. Travel to The Cube Birmingham and other sites will be required as and when needed.What youll be leading on

• Lead the management and optimisation of operational technology and corporate technology applications.
• Lead the applications team and existing supplier landscape to minimise any risks and costs whilst enhancing service and security for the business and its users. This includes all database support.
• Enhance application governance, prioritise critical applications which create the most value and benefit for the business in your decision making.
• Be the single point of accountability for all applications and any vendor services that support our applications landscape across our data centres, public cloud, on- premise and end devices.
• Work with key lifecycle stakeholders to ensure the introduction of application services are planned, designed, developed, and operationalised successfully and in alignment with the IT portfolio office and service transition processes.
• Lead the implementation of the application strategy and optimisation roadmap. You will be accountable for the delivery of reliable and available business critical safety applications.
• Lead the teams and suppliers using a combination of agile and waterfall methodologies.
• Maintain and exceed the agreed support SLAs/OLAs and ensure applications are available for use as they were designed.
• Drive an innovative and engaging continuous service improvement strategy enabling safer and more cost-effective agile ways of working.
• Develop productive relationships with business leaders to influence how applications can enable new sources of value.

• Ensure the relevant Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans are kept up to date for all applications and associated services. These should be tested prior to the going live and periodically thereafter and as agreed with the business.
• Lead on the investigation and resolution of complex incidents, problems and any sub-optimal performance of the applications portfolio.
• Own and manage the on-call rota requirements for your team and supplier landscape. Support and be part of the on-call managers rota

To be successful

• Proven leadership experience of an applications team or enterprise service, able to create vision and direction for the applications team and its suppliers. Must have significant management experience in a similar sized organisation.
• Strong commercial acumen, specifically around the total cost of ownership supplier management and license costs.
• Able to define and enhance methodologies and practices for the application life cycle management. Follows a best practice and continual service improvement approach.
• Provide support the application team in developing their skills and capabilities. Lead on any application team recruitment with the support of HR.
• Experience of application consolidation, transformation and migration.
• Expert in Application Testing
• Advocate for process adherence across the ITIL lifecycle and where your team or suppliers encounter these processes.
• Advocate for configuration and asset management
• Expert in application availability
• Advocate for continual service improvement
• Holds intermediate or specialist ITIL V3/V4 Certifications
• Certified in Agile and Waterfall ways of working
• Potentially Certified in an Architecture framework

A bit about usThe Information and Technology Directorate is a growing and vibrant team and there has never been a better time to join us as we go through our transformation programme. We are helping to transform the way Highways England operates by delivering digital,data and technology services from frontline to back office, in a modern and efficient way. Our vision is to develop integrated information and technology that empowers our colleagues and provides real time information to our customers, integration with intelligentvehicle and transport systems as they develop, to improve journey safety and reliability.