Head of Technology Operations

Head of Technology Operations

Location: Halifax or Peterborough / hybrid

Department: IT Support & Platform

Contract type: Permanent

About the role

Were recruiting for a Head of Technology Operations to join ourteam. They will have overall responsibility for the day-to-day management activities and guidance of the Activate Group IT Support and platform engineering teams with first and second line support led through the Service Desk Manager. The role owns all Activate Group IT infrastructure and platforms with full accountability for defining and delivering the platform strategy across all group systems and environments and for infrastructure availability security and performance. Working closely with the Head of Development and the Director of Data the role champions modern platform engineering DevOps and site reliability engineering practices and acts as the senior (4th line escalation point for critical infrastructure issues.

Activate Group is a growing UK business with 1000 team members nationwide. This is an exciting opportunity to build a long-term career with a company that values its people and offers genuine development and progression opportunities.

Key responsibilities

Leadership and Management:

• Lead the IT Support and platform engineering teams managing first and second line support through the Service Desk Manager including effective resource demand and utilisation planning to deliver high-quality service.
• Manage both teams set objectives and targets working together to achieve them promoting professional growth and skill development.
• Monitoring the teams closely to ensure exceptional service is provided and KPIs are met.
• Foster a collaborative inclusive and high-performance culture actively removing barriers between teams and celebrating achievements to build motivation.
• Establish ambitious standards and support the teams to achieve high performance through regular 121s challenge feedback and recognition. Identify training needs and develop others by building their skills and confidence.
• Adhere to all relevant regulatory rules and guidance applicable to the role.
• Adhere to and function within departmental budgets ensuring cost-effective operations.
• Identify evaluate and implement technology automation and process improvements to increase efficiency and service quality building business cases for investment where required.
• Build and lead the platform engineering capability setting clear standards career paths and development opportunities.

IT Infrastructure and Support:

• Through the Service Desk Manager ensure first and second line support provides timely and effective assistance to internal users across hardware software networking and business applications with incident problem and request management owned through to resolution.
• Define monitor and report on IT support metrics KPIs and SLAs using insight data and root-cause analysis to inform decisions and drive continuous improvement initiatives.
• Take full ownership of key projects delivering at pace while maintaining quality in line with business objectives.
• Embed ITIL-aligned incident problem change and asset management processes owning the ITSM toolset service catalogue and knowledge base.
• Own and manage all group IT infrastructure including servers cloud platforms (Microsoft 365 Azure/Entra ID) networking (LAN/WAN Wi-Fi VPN) endpoint estate and telephony across all sites acting as senior technical escalation point on major incidents.
• Ensure infrastructure availability resilience and performance owning monitoring capacity planning and preventative maintenance across the estate.
• Own backup business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements including regular testing of recovery plans.
• Define and maintain the infrastructure roadmap managing hardware and software lifecycles upgrades and end-of-life replacement across all sites.
• Own day-to-day IT security operations including patching endpoint protection access and identity management and support for the groups cyber security policies and accreditations.
• Manage third-party IT suppliers contracts and software licensing holding vendors to account on performance and value.
• Plan and deliver technical projects such as hardware refreshes site openings and moves system upgrades and automation initiatives
  

Platform Strategy and Engineering:

• Define communicate and deliver the long-term platform strategy across all Activate Group systems and environments ensuring alignment with the technology roadmap and growth plans.
• Drive adoption of modern cloud containerisation (e.g. Kubernetes) and platform engineering practices to increase scalability resilience and speed of delivery.
• Lead the adoption of infrastructure as code (IaC) CI/CD pipelines and automated testing within platform operations.
• Champion site reliability engineering (SRE) practices embedding monitoring observability and incident response and continuously improving performance metrics including application load times throughput and error rates.
• Partner with the Head of Development and the Director of Data to design platform services that accelerate product delivery and data-driven innovation providing developers with self-service reliable and well-documented platform capabilities.
• Act as the 4th line escalation point for critical system firewall switching and infrastructure incidents that cannot be resolved by support or infrastructure teams.
• Ensure platforms are cost-optimised secure and future-proof working with InfoSec to maintain robust security compliance and governance across all environments.
• Establish governance and reporting on platform performance cost and risk.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders across the
  organization.
• Act as a point of escalation for complex issues and ensure timely resolution
• Communicate updates and risks consistently to senior management sharing longterm plans to build clarity and alignment across the business.
• Act as a senior technical authority within Activate Group representing platform and infrastructure capabilities with senior stakeholders and customers where required.

Leadership Behaviours:

This role is expected to lead in line with the Activate Group Leadership Competency Framework:

• Win Together build strong trusting relationships across IT Development Data and the wider business; involve the right people early communicate openly and respectfully and create an inclusive culture of learning and collaboration.
• Strive for Better champion innovation and challenge outdated thinking; create space for experimentation use insight and data to inform direction welcome constructive challenge and continuously improve ways of working.
• Make It Happen take full accountability for decisions and outcomes; make timely well-judged decisions even with limited information set clear direction remove barriers before they escalate and deliver high-quality results at pace.
  

Skills and experience

• Proven experience in a senior platform infrastructure or DevOps leadership role ideally in SaaS InsurTech or B2B technology including ownership of IT infrastructure and service desk functions in a multi-site environment.
• Management experience
• Strong track record of building and scaling cloud-native platforms (Azure OCI AWS or similar) with deep technical knowledge of server and cloud infrastructure (Microsoft 365 Azure/Entra ID) virtualisation networking (LAN/WAN Wi-Fi VPN firewalls) endpoint management (e.g. Intune) and backup/DR technologies.
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes cloud networking CI/CD pipelines infrastructure as code and platform security.7
• Experience leading site reliability engineering (SRE) monitoring observability and performance optimisation (load times application speed latency management).
• Experience providing senior-level escalation support for complex infrastructure firewall networking and systems issues
• ITIL Foundation certification (or above) and hands-on experience with ITSM platforms and reporting
• Solid understanding of cyber security controls and compliance frameworks (e.g. Cyber Essentials ISO 27001 GDPR) patching and access management.
• Experience managing third-party IT suppliers contracts and licensing.
• Data-literate comfortable building KPI and SLA reporting (e.g. Excel Power BI).
• Hardworking and can-do attitude.
• Solution-orientated looking to get to the bottom of an issue and use initiative.
• Flexible and ready to support after working hours.

Benefits

We believe in rewarding our people for the great work they do. When you join Activate Group you can expect:

• 33 days holiday including bank holidays

• Personal health cash plan claim back the cost of everyday healthcare such as dental and optical check-ups

• Enhanced maternity paternity adoption and shared parental pay

• Life assuranceat three times your basic salary

• Free breakfasts and fresh fruit

• Abirthday surprisefor everyone

What you can expect from us

At Activate Group we want everyone to have the tools and support they need to do their best work. Were an innovative business that continuously reviews and improves our systems processes and ways of working making sure they support our teams to do their jobs effectively.

Every role at Activate Group is aligned to our wider business vision and purpose making someones bad day better. Youll understand how your role contributes to the bigger picture and how your work helps deliver excellent outcomes for customer and partners.

We believe work should be enjoyable. We make time to celebrate success recognise achievements and bring people together at team events and company-wide celebrations. Well also support your ongoing development through regular feedback and career planning.

Whether youre based in one of our contact centres in Halifax Peterborough or Huddersfield working at an Activate Accident Repair (AAR) site or working from home youll be part of a supportive culture where people are encouraged to succeed.

A bit about us

Activate Group is a fast-growing business approaching1000 team members nationwide.

We work with some of the UKs largest fleets and insurance companies supporting drivers that have been involved in road incidents through our contact centres inHalifax Peterborough and Huddersfield.

We manage every step of the repair journey - repairing vehicles at our ownActivate Accident Repair (AAR)body shops as well as through a UK-wide network of trusted independent repair partners.

We also work with the UKs largest vehicle manufacturers supporting their approved repair programmes and deliver innovative technology solutions to fleets vehicle repair centres and dealerships.

Our purpose & values

Our purpose underpins everything we do: Make someones bad day better

Our values define how we work with our team members customers and suppliers:

• Make it happen Be accountable. Take the initiative work fast and do a great job.

• Strive for better Be bold. Challenge the norm - make small improvements often.

• Win together Be a team player. Win together learn together respect each other.