Job description

King’s College London is looking for a Student Solutions Designer to help us in the successful solution design, development and delivery of the university’s Student Solutions supporting the University 2029 Vision and linked Education strategy, ensuring they meet the business needs, are delivered to the agreed standard and fit with architectural requirements.  

You will then ensure that there is Solutions Design capability for each product that you’re assigned to within the Education & Students domain and their Service Product Strategy Groups (SPSG’s), incorporating the Service Product Strategies within those groups, and referencing to the related IT Service Catalogue entries. 

The successful candidate will be core to developing the technical vision for a solution, focused on ‘building the thing’ right. As such, the Solutions Designer will design end to end IT solutions to meet customer needs encompassing infrastructure, hardware and software.  

They will develop and acquire deep E&S domain knowledge, and have expertise in design and solution architecture, and relevant subject matter expertise to the assigned products.  

There will also be full participation in horizontal teams from the IT Directorate, working closely with the Student Product Owners, along with other Solutions Designers, the Portfolio and Services teams.  

The role will report to the Student Solutions Manager. 

This post will be offered on a full-time, indefinite contract.

Key responsibilities

• To provide IT Solutions Designs for assigned student products  
• To develop the technical vision for a Solution, focused on ‘building the thing’ right  
•  To design end to end IT solutions that meet customer needs encompassing infrastructure, hardware and software  
•  To develop and acquire deep E&S domain knowledge  
•  To provide Design and Solution Architecture, Subject Matter Expertise, along with Service Improvement delivery (including the design artifacts to ensure the solution to meet the business needs, delivered to the agreed  standard and fit with architectural principles, standards, etc. in collaboration with the IT Architecture team)  
•  To participate in horizontal teams both within the IT directorate and across to our business partners  
•  An ability to work under pressure, utilising your initiative and workload prioritization 
•  Responsible for translating performance requirements into specific system technical design requirements and functions 
•  Provide the third line support for applications within Student domain

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.  

Skills, knowledge, and experience

Essential criteria  

1.       Education to degree standard and/or equivalent qualification and experience 

2.       Good knowledge or working experience of providing designing/developing/supporting one or more applications/systems within Student domain (e.g. SITS, Timetabling (Teaching/Exam), Library Management systems, Admission Portal, InPlace, Kaizen, etc)   

3.        In-depth expertise of developing design and architectures for deployment in virtualised on-premises, cloud or hybrid environments  

4.       Good understanding of Student application architecture including familiarisation with SQL, .net, Windows server o/s, virtualization, cloud computing, systems and data security issues, etc.   

5.       Extensive, demonstrable experience in the integration aspects of solution architecture using a variety of protocols and transport mechanisms  

6.       Good understanding of the full solution development lifecycle   

7.       Ability to seek innovative and cost-effective solutions to suit changing priorities with well-developed analytical and problem-solving skills       

8.       Experienced in understanding functional and non-functional for specifying product requirements  

9.       Experienced in working with third parties (both internal and external) to deliver IT solutions   

10.     Excellent stakeholder engagement with key stakeholders in the Education and Students domain on the development and use of Student and Education Products and IT Services  

11.    An understanding of data and integration technologies   

12.   Excellent presentation skills and the ability to confidently communicate    

Desirable criteria

1.       Experience of solution design and architecture   

2.       Knowledge and understanding of cloud computing technology    

3.       Appreciation of key issues within the HE sector (political, social, economic) and appreciation of how these forces drive technology requirements and solutions        

4.       Project and Service Management qualifications/experience (e.g., APM, ITIL 4 ) 

Further information

Your application should clearly set out how you meet the essential criteria as this is how we shortlist applications.