About us Information Services Division (ISD) is the primary provider of IT services to UCL. We support and enhance learning, teaching, research and administrative processes by providing information- and technology-related services to over 50,000 staff and students of UCL and associated institutions. Our goal is to be the leading IT services group in the HE sector and we are growing our team's capability in experience/UX, agile development, security, cloud, service management and partnering. We are modernising our technology foundations, digitising the processes of the university to transform experience for students and staff, and partnering across the university to drive differentiation in UCL education and research. IT Service and Operations manages the infrastructure and data platforms which underpin UCL's central IT services, including data centres, cloud compute and storage platforms, networks, telephony, communications and collaboration and enterprise applications. In addition, IT Service and Operations provides an End-to-end Service Management capability, ensuring UCL's IT services are relevant, responsive and resilient.
About the role The main purpose of this job is to lead the UCL Network Platforms team, maximizing the value derived from the network platform while ensuring the quality of the service provided. The role involves leading stakeholder engagement, identifying user needs in alignment with broader UCL objectives, and defining and prioritizing work in the team backlog. As an entrepreneurial and visionary leader, you will articulate the network platform's success, inspire the respect of a cross-functional team and your peers to realize this vision, and be passionate about championing the user experience of networks at UCL. Key responsibilities include setting the platform's roadmap direction, providing immediate prioritization and guidance to the team, and developing a deep understanding of the platform's broader context to inform decision-making. The post reports to the Director of Cloud and Infrastructure and has 4-6 network engineers as direct reports. If you have any questions about the role, please contact Anthony Peacock via a.peacock(at)ucl.ac.uk
About you The candidate will have demonstrable experience of developing and managing a high performing team of skilled network engineers including the ability to inspire, motivate, coach, mentor and guide. Ability to effectively manage workload by prioritising, delegating and negotiating with colleagues at all levels. The candidate will have the ability to lead the team to develop network solutions through all stages of the product lifecycle alongside colleagues from Architecture, Information Security, and other relevant areas. Coming from a strong technical background, the candidate will have good knowledge and management experience across a breadth of current networking technologies including but not limited to LAN, WAN, Datacentre, Security and Wireless. The candidate will also have good knowledge of cloud networking technologies and the ability to drive forward the networking integration of on-prem and Cloud services. Knowledge and experience of modern, best in brand networking technology is key with a strong ability to transition and embed such platforms into service and manage their ongoing integration. The candidate will have experience of identifying network automation and DevOps opportunities and implementing these using appropriate tooling within operational teams. The candidate will have excellent communication skills and the ability to communicate information to all levels as well as the ability to lead the team to find resolutions during Critical incidents whilst managing stakeholder expectations. Budget management including identifying and influencing cost savings to obtain best value for money. Experience of managing vendor relationships and extracting the best value from these.