Head of Architecture and Enterprise - IT ServicesGrade 9
Head of Architecture and Enterprise - IT ServicesGrade 9
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£ 57422 - 66537
1 Vacancy
Job Description
Position Details
IT Services
Location: University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham UK
Full time starting salary is normally in the range 57422 to 66537 with potential progression once in post to 86760
Grade: 9
Full Time (Part Time applications at 30 hours per week will also be considered)
Permanent
Closing date: 7th May 2025
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 andweare 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 todevelopthrough our sectorleading Birmingham Professional programmewhichprovides allprofessionalservices staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential.With almost 5000professionalservices jobs in a widerange of functionsin Edgbaston andin our campus inDubai there are plenty of opportunities foryou to be able to develop yourcareer 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 areand how we work.
Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees andtothe success of the University and depending on the role we offer avarietyof flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working addition you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 dayspaid holidaya 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 stateoftheart sports centre with pool shopsplaces to eat and drinkour own art gallery museum and botanical gardens.
Find out more about thebenefits of working for the Universityof Birmingham
Background
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 biannual 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.
Role Summary
The Head of Architecture plays a key role in structuring the supporting the university in terms of its business data application and technical architectures. This person aligns strategic goals and objectives with decisions regarding products and services partners and suppliers organisation capabilities and key business and IT initiatives.
The underlying drivers are based around the University Strategic Framework and the refreshed Digital Strategy supporting business operations data governance and technical frameworks and related processes which link these aspects of the university together. The Head of Architecture & Design will develop and maintain an integrated view of the university using a repeatable approach cohesive framework and available industry standard techniques.
The Head of Architecture reports to the CIO to align technical solutions with business needs. The post has supervisory responsibility of the wider architecture team including specialist in data and process skills and involves coaching mentoring and management. In addition the Head of Architecture will work with others at all levels of the organisation analysing strategic imperatives from senior leaders and supporting managers as they develop and deliver business plans. The Head of Architecture also provides direct input into the governance cycle that supports the achievement of key goals planning and of strategic initiatives or programmes and delivery of bottomline business value.
Main Duties
Primary duties
- Strategic Planning: Develop and maintain the enterprise architecture roadmap in alignment with the universitys strategic plan. Support this with more detailed architecture analysis and solutions in each of the separate domain areas.
- Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely with academic and administrative departments to understand their needs and ensure technology solutions support their goals.
- Key Individual Engagement:Maintain relationships with key staff in education research support functions and within the IT department.
- Technology Integration: Oversee the selection and integration of new technologies into the existing IT infrastructure ensuring compatibility and efficiency.
- Efficiency: Ensure that the architecture factors in and delivers improved efficiency and effectiveness for business and IT areas.
- Coordination: Ensure that plans and roadmaps across all domains align and are compatible with the overall roadmap.Identify issues and propose solutions where needed.
- Compliance: Ensure that all IT systems and processes comply with relevant standards and policies.
- Innovation: Identify and evaluate emerging technologies that could benefit the university and lead pilot projects to assess their feasibility.
- Documentation: Maintain comprehensive documentation of the enterprise architecture including system diagrams data models and process flows.
- Solution Design: Ensure that projects and services have suitable solution designs developed and maintained.
- Delivery: Support the IT projects and portfolio delivery function as needed where expertise or insight is needed when projects are being delivered.
- Subject Expertise:Develop and enhance both personal and team architecture skills and knowledge and understanding of the university.
- Security: Work closely with Information Security to ensure solutions are designed with security in mind.
- Management: Oversee and manage the work across the architecture function.
- Leadership: Provide guidance and mentorship to the architecture team and the wider IT staff fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation.
Additional activities
- Support Continuous Improvement in both architecture activities and the wider IT function.
- Conduct analysis to determine the best path for solving problems/opportunities that may include process improvement and systems enhancement.
- Reviewing analysing evaluating ideas projects and opportunities to develop new products and services.
- Collaborating across departments to both find opportunities for and aid the showcase of the emerging pipeline and strategic direction.
- Providing overall direction guidance and definition of enterprise architecture to effectively support both the University and IT strategies.
- Ensuring solutions developed are aligned to enterprise architecture standards and principles leverage common solutions and services and work within agreed budgetary costs.
- Creating business architecture models demonstrating how products processes operations and systems interoperate.
- Applying and using business modelling methods to ensure results orientated deliverables to standardise where possible systems and services.
- Acting as a subject matter expert in the development of architecture framework development tool suite selection and methodology development.
- Having and continuing to gain a broad understanding of industry trends and innovations and their impact on technology.
- Working with all IT departments to identify and document the capability initiative needs and strategic prioritisation into deliverables and roadmaps setting the architectural vision.
- Ensuring team and project requirements are in alignment with both strategies current and future state IT architecture. Accountable and responsible for architectural and design governance and interaction with university governance.
- Actively manages equality diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour.
- Supports the Universitys sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.
- Any other duties commensurate with the grade.
Required Knowledge Skills Qualifications Experience
- Experienced architect with background in developing technology architect solutions for systems infrastructure security and wider enterprises.
- Experienced in using and qualified in suitable architecture frameworks and qualifications e.g. TOGAF CISSP etc.
- Broad enterprisewide understanding of Applications Infrastructure Project Management Service Design and Governance.
- Understanding of organisational business systems processes and their infrastructure needs.
- The ability to recognize structural issues within an organization functional interdependencies and crosssilo redundancies.
- The ability to apply architectural principles to business solutions.
- Understanding of the legal and purchasing requirements of delivering IT projects and the need for infrastructure input to these processes to ensure compliance.
- Ability to examine technologies and trends to identify the benefits the University can leverage from adopting those in the future in addition to the immediate usages.
- Able to clearly articulate complex technical concepts in plain language.
- The ability to assimilate and correlate disconnected documentation and drawings and articulate their collective relevance to the organisation and to highpriority business issues.
- Experience using modelbased representations that can be adjusted as required to collect aggregate or disaggregate complex and conflicting information about the business.
- The ability to visualise and create highlevel models that can be used in future analysis to extend and mature the business architecture.
- Experience planning and deploying both business and IT initiatives.
- Experience modelling business processes using a variety of tools and techniques.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to communicate appropriately at all levels of the organisation.
- Demonstrable leadership and budget management experience.
- Confident diligent seeks ways to maximise benefits from any technological design choices
- A solution orientated big picture thinker broadly aware of multiple technologies capable of learning.
- Able to dive into detail as needed for specific situations or to support particular people or projects.
- Strong situational analysis and decisionmaking abilities.
- Able to delegate able to take a wide view.
- Team player able to work effectively at all levels of an organization with the ability to influence others to move toward consensus.
- 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 be professional specialists with highlevel technical expertise and experience strategically leading and managing a technical/specialist/ functional service or IT business area with responsibility and accountability for all operational aspects including managing major projects and initiatives to ensure delivery/improvements across the piece.Role holders will shape the medium to long term plan for their function to fit with broader functional and University strategy.
Alternatively other role holders at this level will be specialists exercising a substantial degree of independent professional responsibility and discretion.Individuals will typically be senior individual contributors who are the Universitys leading experts in a technical technological or specialised field. They will also make major contributions to the strategic plan for their own area to fit with the broader functional and University strategy; they may manage a significant specialist facility/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 others to join you in collaborative working groups as necessary.You will need to be flexible in supporting your department and wider University.
Planning and organising
- strategically lead a technical service or business area setting high professional standards evaluating the area and lead change;
- develop and implement quality standards and monitor delivery against these;
- take a longterm perspective of the University and the opportunities and threats it faces;
- manage the conflicting pressures of longer term planning with shortterm demands;
- grow internal capability in expertise area often through internal training or coaching.
or
- act as a standalone specialist providing an outstanding level of professional expertise to other specialists typically providing expert advice across the University as a whole;
- lead several concurrent complex projects;
- apply professional expertise to analyse and present complex data and to refine methods and practices.
Problem solving and decision making
- interpret and identify the implications of changes to the environment external to the University and make recommendations proactively for how to react to them;
- initiate creative and innovative solutions in area of expertise to build capability and influence the direction of the specialism;
- as appropriate research and develop drafts of papers taking account of the final audience socialising ideas and seeking input and producing final drafts;
- resolve complex issues often needing a strong element of informed judgement not just good reasoning skills.
Organisational understanding
- quickly develop an indepth understanding of their own area and an excellent understanding of the contribution other areas make to success of the University;
- quickly develop an excellent understanding of how the University and academia operate in the UK (and beyond as appropriate);
- demonstrate empathy with the academic endeavour and encourages others to do so.
Relationships and communication
- develop strong working relationships and a high level of credibility with senior staff developed through authoritative advice guidance and influencing skills;
- interact effectively at senior levels within the University;
- network with fellow professionals in the wider community to stay up to date;
- provide expert input for internal/external meetings influencing and facilitating different opinions to reach consensus;
- lead and inspire others.
Informal enquiries to Mark Gee email:
View our staff values and behaviourshere
We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyoneon our website.
Required Experience:
Director
Employment Type
Full-Time
