Group IT Solutions and Development Director

Connells Group is the leading UK estate agency and property services group, with over 80 different brands and 1,250 branches UK-wide. Alongside a significant high street estate agency presence, it has a strong financial services business operation, offering all services to support sales, purchases, lettings, mortgages, building surveys & valuations, conveyancing, auctions and more.

The Group IT Solutions & Development Director role reports directly into the Group CTO and is part of the IT leadership team. The role is both strategic in shaping technology strategies, and technical, by leading a significant internal engineering function as well as managing the technical relationship of many suppliers.

Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities

• Development of the IT systems strategy covering technical roadmaps to deliver effective solutions.
• Continuous development of the technology landscape with a focus on systems and solutions, providing a better experience for our colleague and customers. •
• Continuous improvement of delivery methods & software engineering to reduce the timeline to deliver technology change with an ongoing aim to improve the quality of change implemented.
• Maintain a strong awareness of technology trends, driving innovation opportunities to deliver future growth and operational efficiencies
• Management of a complex portfolios of technology change across all business areas.
• Own technical relationships with key application suppliers where systems are externally sourced, ensuring we get the right technical solutions in the most timely manner with maximum value and integration where possible.
• Leadership of a large internal engineering team including technical skillsets covering systems architecture, application, web & data development across all areas including analysis, development, test. Provide guidance, mentorship and set clear objectives enabling teams to succeed.
• Implementation of best practice engineering processes.
• Maintaining good financial control of the department, leveraging economies of scale by ensuring we have fewer more strategic partners and reducing unnecessary expenditure.

Experience and Qualifications

• Preferably educated to graduate level
• Experience of working within organisations with multiple separate subsidiaries and brands beneath it, ideally with a significant high street presence
• Built, managed and grown internal multi-disciplined engineering teams
• Driving force who leads and encourages teams to meet and exceed goals and targets Possess a strong architecture understanding and managed teams of architects, developers and testers
• Understanding of GDPR principles including data retention and anonymisation procedures & policies
• Background in operating within an IT leadership team, having strong leadership, influence and communications skills and working collaboratively with other members of the ITLT
• Helped drive excellence in the software development lifecycle
• Experience of “big data” including aligning and integrating internal and third party datasets together and making use of this for reporting and BI purposes
• Experience and knowledge of Microsoft .NET and Azure development technologies, software development lifecycles, IT process and delivery methods
• Ensure products are delivered to business customers with high quality and reliability
• Must be able to work collaboratively with a range of business leaders across the organisation, and with external stakeholders at a similar technical level
• Evidence of adaptability and flexibility to changing business demands
• Background of leadership responsibilities including risk management and departmental budget responsibility