Deputy Director Platforms and Technology

Job summary

This is an exciting time to join the Digital, Information, and Security Directorate within the department for Transport as we restructure our directorate to ensure are ready for future challenges building a more sustainable, skilled, and in-house capability and ensuring that we are well equipped to efficiently and expertly deal with the increased and ever evolving cyber-security threat, and lead the digital transformation of the department to realise the Government’s ambitions set out in the Blueprint for a Modern Digital Government.

Our restructuring will require a significant change in how we work to ensure we deliver clear outcomes to our customers and continue to learn and improve. As part of the senior leadership team, the role will be pivotal in creating, shaping, and nurturing the cultural change needed and through strong leadership and role modelling will reinforce the directorate’s cultural goals.

Platforms and Technology

This role will sit at the head of our Platforms Function.

This team is responsible for the efficient delivery of secure, robust, and scalable technology foundations to enable digital delivery and transformation across DfTc and the wider DfT Group.

This multi-disciplinary team is dedicated to delivering robust technological foundations that support digital transformation, including maintaining a secure and compliant IT environment, enabling collaboration and digital productivity, and ensuring scalable and reliable IT services.

The team drives innovation through data-driven insights and supports a connected, integrated IT infrastructure. The team are also responsible for managing security operations and cyber resilience, overseeing cloud computing and infrastructure, and guiding technology architecture.

Job description

Responsibilities of the role include:

This is a new role within the directorate that draws together our architecture, cloud and cyber-security operations capability. You will be expected to deliver a step-change in our capabilities in these areas.

Working as part of a talented team, at this role level, you will:

• Rebuild the organisation’s architecture capability, drive further strengthening of our cyber-security posture, and ensure diligent management of the configuration of our cloud estate
• Develop, deliver and continuously maintain a capability development plan for the Platforms and Technology team to ensure they are meeting the evolving
• requirements of the wider directorate and organisation
• Actively engage the wider organisation to understand and evaluate the organisation’s range of information and communication technology requirements
• Create a strategy and vision for technology that aligns with the organisation’s broader digital strategy and enables the organisation to achieve its objectives
• Lead the organisation in implementing this technology strategy
• Put in place a technology architecture that provides secure and reliable infrastructure and ensures financial efficiency of technology spend
• Ensure systems and services are continuously operational and resistant to attacks and disasters
• Enable the organisation to be innovative and adopt new technologies that offer value
• Work within appropriate levels of risk
• Ensure people have the tools, technical skills and working environment they need
• Create working practices and process that support effective delivery

You will:

• Role model positive behaviours and support the embedding of the new operating model and the changes to the ways of working, including continuous personal development.
• Effectively line manage a team embedding the civil service line management standards and consistently applying the line management policies and processes
• expected, e.g. managing performance, career conversations, team development, succession planning.
• Develop and implement clear and effective team development plans.

Person specification

You will need to be able to show, through your application, that you have the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal qualities for this post, as well as the leadership skills to succeed at Deputy Director level in the Senior Civil Service.

The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate their experience and skills against the following essential criteria:

We will be looking at your experience, career history and achievements that are relevant to this role. We expect you to demonstrate that you are capable against the following experience, behaviours, and technical skills to succeed in this role:

• Proven senior leadership experience in the design, delivery and operation of large-scale digital platforms or enterprise technology environments, demonstrably aligned to organisational strategy and user outcomes
• Demonstrable experience of operating as an effective and collaborative member of a senior leadership team, contributing to collective decision-making, shared accountability and cross-directorate outcomes, while balancing ownership of a defined portfolio with the need to support and enable peers to deliver broader organisational priorities.
• A strong track record of setting and executing technology strategy, including platform modernisation, cloud adoption, and the transition from legacy environments to secure, scalable, and resilient services
• Deep understanding of modern digital, data and technology practices, including platform engineering, infrastructure, end-user computing, and identity and access management, with the ability to make sound architectural and investment decisions at pace
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, with experience of owning and managing significant budgets, shaping investment cases, and delivering value for money in a fiscally constrained environment
• A clear understanding of technology risk, security, resilience and dependency management, including the ability to balance pace of delivery with operational stability,
  assurance and compliance obligations

Experience

You will have experience in, and the ability to:

• Provide leadership to a team with a broad range of technical skills
• Build the capability of the team, identifying and filling gaps as necessary, and plan the develop of the capability to meet future requirements
• Technical experience of working in cloud computing, architecture and cyber security operations

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £95,000, Department for Transport contributes £27,521 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career with the Department and wider Civil Service.

It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead, and you’ll benefit from regular performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

The Civil Service values and supports all its employees.

We have strong and pro-active staff networks, special leave policies for hospital appointments, reasonable adjustments put in place for those who need them, and diversity talent programmes to help everyone irrespective of background, to achieve their potential.