Technology Director - London, United Kingdom - The Digital Board

Description

We are looking to recruit a Technology Director for the world's leading private schools group with multi-billion dollar valuation.

They are Private Equity owned and are anticipating an exit within the next 18 months.

As a group, they operate in over 30 countries and are located across:
Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, China and the US, with 80+ schools and 77,000+ students.

Thebusiness has a "start-up" culture feel within an established business, but they are on a continuous journey of transformation as they scale and mature.

While their peers are operating in a relatively traditional sector, they are fast becoming a truly digitallyaugmented business that makes every moment of their pupil's education count.

Reporting to the Group CTO, the Technology Director will operate as the overall technical lead and design authority for this new digital business line and product group (essentially a mini-CTO).

This is a relatively new digital group that has been set upwithin the business, designed to enable teachers and students to interact with a series of e-learning tools.

Its USP is that it is focussed on metacognition - someone's ability to learn for themselves.

The idea is that using this framework, teachers can (forexample) put in a maths or a history lesson and it has an underlying framework of metacognition to reflection, evaluation etc.

When it comes to technology, this role takes the overall lead in ensuring the business carefully and confidently balances educational opportunities, commercial value, ethical ambitions, P&L, cybersecurity risks, and the latest technological & data scienceaffordances.

This role will lead the decision-making on crucial elements such as the right balance of internal vs external software engineering capability, centralised/decentralised data architectures, a best-of-breed solutions architecture, and many more.

The Technology Director collaborates with key educational, commercial, and technical teammates and stakeholders to ensure our use of technology across a suite of products is coherent, well-designed, and ambitious while delivering excellent value-for-money.

The Technology Director has five key areas of responsibility:

• Identify, analyse, and champion technology opportunities & risks across the entire business estate;
• Own the overall technology vision, strategy, and delivery plan
• Conceive, deliver, own & champion an endtoend "Solutions Architecture Map";
• Main point of contact and governance for 3rd party software engineering delivery teams
• Communicate clearly, persuasively, and diplomatically with teammates & stakeholders

Experience required

• Vendor management is key as the product is being built externally, but so is the solution architecture ownership of how the four components glue together. The concern is that (without effective leadership in this role) they could easily end up with fourdistinct paths that lack an overall user experience.
• As there isn't a Chief Architect in the overall group business, having some form of solution architecture background
• A track record of building product is also key (but from a technical perspective, not product management).
• You will have to understand and work within the constructs of a business, working with stakeholders who both will deliver and will use the product. You will also work very closely with educators in an integrated agile team.
• Proven experience working both strategically and tactically with technology, specifically at the intersection of Agile software development, inthefield customer devices/networks, and enterprise information technology
• Proven ability to discover, empathise with and prioritise the needs of a product's users, to balance these with business needs and commercial ambitions, and to understand and leverage the role technology plays in meeting these complex, interdependent, needs
• Proven experience working both strategically and tactically with cloudbased technology platforms (experience with MS Azure infrastructure is a bonus)
• Proven experience creating and championing solution architectures
• Proven ability to tell compelling stories about, and with, technology
• Strong proficiency with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint for producing reports and presentations.
• Good crosscultural, interpersonal and communication skills to interact with diverse nationalities and cultures
• Excellent mix of creative & analytical skills with the passion and drive to innovate but also quantify and demonstrate success
• Results orientated with the ability to consistently map efforts against identified KPIs
• Excellent time management skills and flexibility in dealing with multifunctional tasks

Personal attributes

• You will thrive being part of a team it's what gets you up in the morning.
• You'll run it like you own it you take huge pride in your work and your relationships.
• You're resilient you'll speak up and speak the truth.
• You get the job done to outstanding levels of quality, every time and always to the deadline.
• You're humble you'll know what you're great at and where you're not quite so strong.
• You're a listener you'll hear what people say so you understand what's being asked.
• You're calm under pressure you'll keep cool when the going gets tough and know when to slow down your thinking.
• Entrepreneurial you'll always find opportunities to do things differently and better.