The Department and role purpose

The Computing and Information Services (CIS) has an annual operational budget in the order of £10m, multi-million pound programmes of change within year, and approximately 165 staff. The Senior Leadership Team report directly to the Chief Information Officer with the following portfolios: Strategy and Change; Operations; and Information Systems. CIS provide academic, teaching and administrative services across the organisation that underpin the day-to-day activities of the whole organisation.

Recent infrastructure improvements include investment in a new network backbone, including new cable runs throughout the city to all of the Universities core buildings, network virtualisation, new scalable user facing storage, and a new hosting environment. Corresponding business led investment also continues to be made with a new web programme, training platform, student relationship management system, investment in research administration, and maximising the breadth of opportunities available to the University through Office365, alongside numerous other important initiatives. Investment is aligned to the University's Digital strategy which seeks to provide a clear vision for how digital services can be an enabler to the overall University strategy and objectives.

CIS is a friendly, but demanding department, where much is expected and can be achieved by competent, self-motivated individuals who are demonstrable in their teamwork ability.

As one of the IT Senior Leadership Team you will provide leadership for teams of staff within the department. As required, you will deputise for the Chief Information Officer as required, ensuring continuity of support for the Department's University Executive lead and University Executive in such situations.

You will be responsible for all IT technical services and support services at Durham University. This includes: user facing touchpoints and backend infrastructure; hybrid Windows environments, Linux/Unix; Networking; High Performance and Research Computing; Data Centres; Service Desk; Field Teams and Audio Visual Services.

Working alongside appointed partners you will manage an annual revenue budget of ~£10m non-staff costs and be accountable for ensuring the effective delivery of capital projects and the general maintenance of service lifecycle of the IT estate, including budgetary forecasting and management.