ITO Operational Support Manager

ITO Operational Support Manager  

This is a full-time, permanent position.

Context

The Francis Crick Institute (the Crick) is a partnership between the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the Wellcome Trust, University College London (UCL), Imperial College London and Kings College London. It is a registered charity whose purpose is to conduct biomedical research into all aspects of human health and disease.

The Institute will be a world-leading centre of biomedical research and innovation. It will promote connections between researchers and disciplines and between academic institutions, healthcare organisations and businesses.

Dedicated to research excellence, the Institute will have the scale, vision and expertise to tackle the most challenging scientific questions underpinning health and disease. It will be world-class with a strong national role—training scientists and developing ideas for public good. The Crick is located in a new, purpose built research centre in central London (Brill Place next to St. Pancras International) and will house some 1,500 researchers.

The Crick will require a state-of-the-art ITO infrastructure to enable world-leading scientific research. The Crick’s ITO will be science‑focused, flexible, and forward-looking, and it will expedite collaboration within and beyond the Institute. Research at The Crick will be data-intensive, and will involve experimental, theoretical and computational science. ITO will also support the business and business management systems required to run the Crick Institute.

Organisation

The ITO Operational Support Manager will report to the Services Delivery Lead with access to resources across the Service Support teams and will be based at the Francis Crick Institute.

Objectives

As ITO Operational Support Manager, you will be responsible for the delivery, maintenance, support, stability and technical ownership of all end-user facing technologies, core business applications and systems and user-facing network elements which include key business and scientific services which are essential to the running of the Crick. You will lead, coach and develop End User Compute, Operational Applications and Networks Operations support teams by example to deliver professional, timely, effective and high-quality support across ITO and the Crick as a whole.

Specific objectives include, but are not limited to the following:

• Manage a team of operational network engineers to support and maintain the Crick’s user-facing network including access switches, network cabling, Wi-Fi networks and equipment, telephony and video conferencing.

• Working with the operational network engineers to establish root cause of outages and equipment failure and to co-ordinate timely equipment replacement to reduce downtime on critical business, scientific and safety-of-life systems.

• Manage a team of technical resources to deliver the EUC software packaging and maintain desktop technologies throughout the product lifecycle.

• Responsibilities include, interviewing and recruiting staff when necessary, hold regular 1:1s, monthly team meetings, coaching, mentoring and performance management.

• Develop and maintain the End User Compute strategy to include areas such as, antivirus, security patching, drivers /updates, PC and laptop builds, provisioning / imaging OS deployment, user data migration and system tools.

• Maintain awareness of technical developments within the industry and contribute to EUC roadmaps for the Crick estate.

• Drive the adoption of self-service solutions for end-user support.

• Responsible for managing information security across all End User Platforms through configuration and regular patch management of both the operating system and applications.

• Manage a team of application support engineers to support and maintain the Crick’s critical operational applications and systems, including Finance, HR, Logistics, Facilities Management and key Scientific applications and systems

• Manage enhancements and changes to operational applications and other systems through co-ordination with suppliers and stakeholders

• Responsible for monitoring key systems and services and managing outages (planned and unplanned) including user communications and liaison with other support teams and suppliers.

• Continually improve the way operational support services are delivered, supporting the team contribution to the 'Root Cause Analysis’ (RCA) process and Problem Management

• Responsible for maintaining the CMDB and service catalogue, including service mapping and asset management.

• Be point of contact for security matters and ensure auditing of vulnerabilities is maintained.

• Solid understanding and experience of Waterfall Project delivery methodologies and ITIL Service Management.

• Lead daily ITO operational review meetings and represent ITO at Site Operations Update meetings and with other building and facilities management-related meetings as required.

• Deputise for the Service Delivery Lead, including acting as chair of CAB and other duties as required.

• Good working understanding of IAAS/PAAS/SAAS

• Assist with the production of business cases for the procurement of new and replacement systems and services.

• Feed into Service Transition of new or retired services, supporting project delivery and ensuring that acceptance criteria are agreed and delivered before accepting new products into service.

• Responsible for vendor management of key service and technology suppliers.

Person Specification

• Strong working knowledge and experience of developing and delivering End User Compute Technologies, Operational Application and networking support.

• Strong working knowledge and understanding of key EUC technologies, including SCCM, JAMF, Active Directory, Office 365, Sophos antivirus, messaging and collaboration tools and so on

• Strong working knowledge of commercial and scientific application support and systems, including integrations, databases and so on.

• Strong working knowledge of wired and wireless networking technologies, analogue and digital telephony and video conferencing systems

• Technical ability to support and troubleshoot both Windows and Mac end user devices and applications

• Demonstrable experience of coaching and developing staff

• Has worked in an ITIL aligned support environment with and active involvement in supporting processes like Change, Release and Service Transition.  ITIL qualified.

• Demonstrable experience of call-logging and ticketing systems and experience of developing and implementing helpdesk workflows in helpdesk related tools

• A demonstrable ability to balance multiple priorities and operate comfortably in an environment that is developing and changing rapidly both in terms of staffing and scope of work

• Strong interpersonal skills and a proven track record of building effective working relationships at all levels

• Previous experience of developing and effectively maintaining appropriate documentation

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and attention to detail

• Strong organisational skills and a demonstrable ability to manage own time effectively

• Quick learner with proven ability to adapt to changing circumstances

• Previous experience of working in a scientific/medical research environment is very desirable