Chief Technology Officer

Job summary

Job purpose

The Chief Technology Officer is responsible for setting and leading the strategic technology direction for Homes England, ensuring that technology choices, architecture, platforms, products and services enable the organisation to deliver its objectives securely, effectively and sustainably.

The role provides senior technical leadership across Digital and has line management responsibility for the Architecture function and matrix management of the Cyber Security function. Working closely with colleagues across the organisation, the role shapes technology strategy, manages technical and cyber risk, strengthens operational resilience, enables innovation and ensures colleagues have the tools, skills and working environment needed to deliver high-quality digital services.

Job description

Key accountabilities and responsibilities

• Set and own the organisation’s technology approach and vision, ensuring it aligns with Homes England’s wider strategy, digital ambitions and public service outcomes.
• Lead implementation of the technology approach across Digital, ensuring technical decisions support business priorities, user needs, value for money and long-term sustainability.
• Provide senior technical leadership and advice to Executive, Digital and cross-organisational governance forums, advocating for technology as a critical enabler of organisational delivery.
• Evaluate the organisation’s technology estate, identifying opportunities to simplify, modernise, remediate technical debt and improve the effectiveness of platforms, systems and services.
• Provide line management and strategic direction for the Architecture function and Cyber Security function, ensuring both functions are aligned to organisational priorities, risk appetite, delivery needs and professional standards.
• Ensure systems and services are designed securely, continuously operational and resilient to cyber threats, operational disruption and disaster scenarios through secure by design, working closely with security, service and operational teams.
• Enable innovation and adoption of emerging technologies where they provide demonstrable value, managing risk appropriately and ensuring benefits are realised.
• Create effective working practices, processes and governance that support consistent technical decision-making, assurance and delivery across Digital.
• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, suppliers and partners to influence technology outcomes, manage dependencies and support collaborative delivery.
• Develop organisational technology capability by ensuring teams have the tools, technical skills, standards and environment needed to deliver and operate modern digital services.
• Chair the Technology and Innovation group ensuring that underpinning governance of the TDA runs effectively, identifying wider market and government trends, and creating an environment to foster innovation.
• Represent Homes England in the Chief Technology Officer Council within central government.

Person specification

Key skills, knowledge and experience

• Significant senior leadership experience in technology, digital or data within a complex organisation, ideally including public sector, regulated or multi-stakeholder environments.
• Strong understanding of strategic technology planning, enterprise and technical architecture, cloud platforms, infrastructure, service resilience, cyber security, operational risk and the leadership of specialist technical functions.
• Proven ability to set a compelling technology vision, translate strategy into practical delivery plans and make sound technical decisions in ambiguous or complex contexts.
• Experience of leading technology modernisation, improving legacy estates, reducing technical debt and enabling adoption of new technologies where they deliver measurable organisational value.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders, explain complex technical issues clearly and build trust across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong commercial, supplier and partner management awareness, including the ability to balance innovation, value for money, whole-life cost, service quality and risk.
• Experience of developing technical capability, building inclusive high-performing teams and creating the working practices needed for effective digital delivery.
• Relevant professional qualifications, certifications or equivalent experience in technology leadership, architecture, cyber security, or digital delivery are desirable.

Benefits

Homes England is an executive non-departmental public body with its own terms and conditions, benefits and pension scheme. We are a government agency working in partnership with the private sector and want to employ and retain great people. In return we offer a range of excellent benefits, some of the key benefits include:

Holiday - Homes England offers all staff 33 days annual leave per year in addition to 8 statutory bank holidays.

Working Flexibly - At Homes England we have a strong culture of flexible working and encourage all employees to have a healthy work/life balance. We offer a wide range of potential working patterns, including part time, job share and compressed hours.

Health and Wellbeing - We offer health screening with Nuffield Proactive Health Clinics, a free Employee Assistance Programme which offers confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as well as access to Occupational Health.

Professional Development - At Homes England we are committed to your continued professional and personal development with learning as one of our core values. We pay for one job-related professional membership subscription per year for our employees.

We also offer an excellent range of family friendly benefits, for example, maternity, paternity, shared parental leave.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

To apply please follow the links to our careers page.

Security

Successful candidates must pass a disclosure and barring security check.

For more information on the role, please see the attached Job Description.

Successful applicants will be advised of the outcome of their application and interviews held as soon as practical after the closing date. Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in this role and Homes England.

Please note – Homes England has a responsibility to ensure compliance with HMG Baseline Personnel Security Standard to address the potential problems of identity fraud, illegal working and deception generally. To ensure compliance we will carry out a pre-employment Personal Identity and Vetting Report through Experian to meet the standard and you will therefore be asked to provide certain information in order that the verification check can be carried out if you are succes