Platform Manager - #1711248

Job title: Platform Manager

Salary: PO6 £49,764 - £52,805

Hours: 37

Contract: Permanent

Location: Home and office based, chiefly Merrion House but attendance maybe occasionally required at other Leeds based locations.

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Platform Manager to join our team. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in managing technical platforms and a proven track record of building and maintaining business relationships. This role is crucial in ensuring the seamless operation of our platforms and driving strategic initiatives to enhance our service offerings.

Leeds City Council is one of the largest employers in the region with over 14,000 employees. We seek to recruit and develop talented individuals who embody our council values and ambitions .

About You

As the platform Manager you will:

• Oversee the operations of our technical platforms, ensuring its stability, security, and scalability.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, clients, partners, product managers, project managers and internal teams, to understand their needs and ensure our platform meets their requirements.
• Work across the organization creating a program that encourages and enables staff to use our platforms to develop their own solutions. Guardrails and governance will need to be implemented to ensure conformance to LCC regulations and industry best practice.
• Collaborate with senior management to define and execute the platform strategy, aligning it with the company's overall business goals.
• Proactively identify and resolve issues related to the platform, ensuring minimal disruption to our services.
  
  
  

About The Role

This role is challenging and multifaceted with great potential to make it your own. We are creating multiple platforms using Microsoft and AWS technologies which need managing. There are two key areas which you will initially focus on:

• Enhancing our business relationships with emphasis on building Leeds citizen developer community. This will look to increase efficiencies and automation across the directorates. You will engage with all services and create environments with sufficient governance and guardrails for them to be productive while not compromising our infrastructure integrity.
• Ensure our platforms are managed, monitored and maintained to peak performance. This will include technical, financial, development and operational aspects.
  
  
  

You will not work alone but rather form part of a team of existing developers, managers and technical experts who will help you on this journey.

What We Offer You

We take pride in offering the best employee experience, with benefits including:

• a competitive salary and annual leave entitlement plus statutory holidays.
• membership of the West Yorkshire Pension Fund with generous employer contributions.
• flexible and hybrid working arrangements subject to service requirements.
• a clear career pathway and continuing professional development opportunities.
• a range of staff benefits to help you boost your wellbeing and make your money go further.
  
  
  

How To Apply

Please upload your CV and complete a personal statement of no more than 500 words.

Read our guidance for further advice. Please check your information carefully and ensure you complete all sections before submitting your application.

If you have any queries or would like an informal chat about the role please contact Richard Bartlett, Head of DevOps via email [email protected] .

A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check against the Children’s or Adults’ barred list as applicable will be carried out on preferred candidates. Read our  recruitment of ex-offenders policy .

We welcome applications from everyone and actively seek a diverse range of applicants from all backgrounds and cultures. We particularly encourage applications from, but not limited to, women, carers, veterans as well as LGBT+, ethnically diverse, disabled and care experienced people. 

This role is based in the UK. Home Office guidance states that candidates must evidence their right to work in the UK prior to commencing employment, either as a UK or Irish citizen, under the EU Settlement scheme or having secured any other relevant work visa.

 

If you do not have the right to work in the UK, you must consider your own eligibility for sponsorship for a particular role through the  Skilled Worker visa route before applying. To be eligible for sponsorship you'll usually need to be paid the standard salary rate of at least £38,700 per year or meet one of the other eligibility criteria. Ensure you are eligible before applying.

Job Description

Job Purpose: Responsible for technical platforms and driving them forward with the business, working closely with business areas, developing positive working relationships and building capability to deliver efficiencies and automation.

Responsibilities:

• Own the technical platforms for Leeds City Council, including their development, maintenance, governance, optimisation and security.
• Lead development and maintenance of multiple platforms, ensuring they meet the highest standards of performance, security, and scalability. Introduce a dynamic platform strategy covering structure, governance, financials, licensing, etc to Leeds City Council which you will own and develop over time.
• Be aware of relevant financial regulations and work within and interpret financial policies and procedures ensuring value for money.
• Work with a range of business areas with different and complex needs, building relationships with each area to understand their needs and how our platform services can meet them.
• Work across the organization creating a program that encourages and enables staff to use our platforms to develop their own solutions. Guardrails and governance will need to be implemented to ensure conformance to LCC regulations and industry best practice.
• Manage platform-related projects from inception to completion, including planning, execution, and delivery.
• Supervise and mentor a team of developers, engineers, and other technical staff and carry out appraisals as required.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including product managers, marketing, and customer support, to align platform initiatives with business goals.
• Monitor platform performance and implement improvements to optimize speed, reliability, and user experience.
• Ensure the platform adheres to best practices in security and data protection.
• Stay up to date with industry trends and emerging technologies to drive continuous improvement and innovation.
  
  
  

The duties outlined are not meant as an exhaustive list and will also comprise any other duties within the spirit of the post commensurate with the job evaluation outcome for this post.

Qualifications:

It is essential to hold a degree level qualification, or equivalent Knowledge and experience in the service area

Essential requirements Candidates will only be shortlisted if they can demonstrate that they meet all the following essential requirements.

• Proficient with platform-based technologies within a large organisation used to generate business specific systems to streamline and automate business services.
• Able to demonstrate where they have enabled business adoption of a technical platform across a range of different areas. This will include managing change in relation to working practices and culture via the use of staff training/upskilling, documentation, performance/progress reviews and communication plans.
• Able to implement, create, maintain, govern and encourage adoption of platform Centres of Excellence, enabling and enforcing best practices.
• Able to ensure effective management of own time management and that of others.
• Able to communicate purpose and direction with clarity, integrity and enthusiasm.
• Able to respects the needs, responses and opinions of others.
• Able to form effective partnerships and relationships with people both internally and externally, from a range of diverse backgrounds, sharing information, resources and support.
• Able to deliver service objectives with professional excellence, expertise and efficiency, tackling problems and taking effective steps to address them.
• Able to seek out opportunities to create effective change and suggest innovative ideas for process improvement. Review ways of working, including seeking and providing feedback.
• Able to use evidence and knowledge to support accurate, expert decisions and advice.
• Able to carefully consider alternative options, implications and risks of decisions.
• Able to focus on continuous learning and development for self, others and the organisation as a whole.
• Able to create and engage others in delivering a shared vision.
• Able to take responsibility for delivering timely and quality results with focus and drive.
• Knowledge of security covering multiple areas ranging from high level aspects (GDPR, FOI, DPIA) to general knowledge (hacking types, social engineering, data and tools) and specific techniques and standards to secure code.
• An appreciation of information security and ensure the platform adheres to best practices in security and data protection.
• Knowledge of relevant legislation, guidance, policies with ability to interpret and apply them consistently.
• Understanding of responsibilities in terms of Health and Safety, security, confidentiality and data protection.
• Understand the importance of confidentiality.
• Knowledge of how to manage data effectively across environments, understand risk and can implement policies and procedures to manage/mitigate them.
• Understand Data Loss Prevention and how to implement and maintain this on a technical platform.
• Understand how to create and manage platform environments effectively, efficiently and consistently throughout their lifecycle.
• Knowledge of how to assess business needs, evaluate their pros and cons then translate into technical requirements. Can use this information to create effective business cases which combine financial, technical and business value.
• Understand the importance and value of platform component reuse and can identify situations where they apply, where creation can add value and where to avoid.
• Understand how own role fits with and supports organisational objectives.
• Experience with business operational activities and processes which can be combined with platform tools to create applications and automations to drive value or create efficiencies. Understands the importance of Product Managers and how to work closely and routinely with them to support business operations and requests.
• Experience of working with a variety of challenging business areas and technical providers to successfully deliver a platform service, involving but not limited to implementation, business collaboration, managing change, monitoring and maintenance, application portfolio management, troubleshooting, creating SLAs, financial operations, escalation routes, account management, license and contract management.
• Experience of delivering projects utilising Agile methodologies, tools and techniques.
  
  
  

Essential Behavioural & Other Characteristics

• Understand and embrace Leeds City Council Values and Behaviours and codes of conduct.
• Committed to continuous improvement in all areas and work towards delivering the Best City Ambition of Health & Wellbeing, Inclusive Growth and Zero Carbon.
• Able to understand and observe Leeds City Council policies and procedures.
• Carry out all duties having regard to an employee’s responsibility under Health, Safety and Wellbeing.
• Willingness to actively participate in appraisal, training and development activities to ensure up, to date knowledge and skills.
• Flexible and adaptable to change to assist other services as required commensurate to grade.
• Be aware of and support difference and ensure equality for all working in an anti-discriminatory manner, upholding, equality & diversity of Leeds City Council.
• Recognise and appropriately challenge any incidents of racism, bullying, harassment, victimisation, and any form of abuse, reporting any concerns to the appropriate person.
• The Council has adopted a flexibility protocol and the role will be expected to work within these parameters.
  
  
  

Desirable requirements Candidates are not required to meet all the following desirable requirements however these may be used to distinguish between candidates.

• Proficiency in DevOps practices and ideally experienced with Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines, repos.
• Source Control - Visual Studio, Azure DevOps, Github or other source control management tools.
• Understand the importance of and proficient in the use of source control tooling.
• Project Management Concepts - Covering concepts such as risk management, Gantt charts, PID and in particular agile / lean / devops ways of working. Familiar and experienced with supporting Project Management Concepts.
• Understand the different types of testing (UAT, Smoke, performance, etc) and how they apply to platforms and applications.
  
  
  

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