SUPP111637

Within the University our IT Services department is on an exciting journey. Our vision is to provide globally accessible technical services and digital solutions to empower world class learning and research at the University. We are looking for an experienced Senior Platform Engineer to join the Platforms Team in IT Services. A Senior Engineer provides specialist expertise to support the performance and availability of the core production environment, ensuring they meet agreed service levels, and works with 3rd party suppliers, where appropriate, to deliver an effective service to the university. The role holder will provide technical knowledge and expertise at a senior level with at least one area of specialism within an IT Services operational technical team. The role holder/team is responsible for the end-to-end service including operations, maintenance and development of services in their specialisms, which together underpin the delivery of the University's wide portfolio of digital services. The role is responsible for the day-to-day technical operation of the team's specialist services and works closely with other teams in IT services supporting other areas, following and advancing professional project and team working practices at all times.What will you be doing? The role holder supports and implements a broad range of complex technical, operational and problem-solving activities for infrastructure and application services, and provide professional advice about their area of expertise to academic and professional services staff. The role holder ensures that the products, suppliers and vendors come together to deliver an effective service to the business. The role holder is expected to perform ongoing technical management of services in their team's scope, under the leadership of their team manager. A key focus of the role will be to support the Platforms Team Manager with the day-to-day operation of the virtualised platforms. Other aspects of the role will include -

• Take technical responsibility for the set of services provided by the team, supporting the Team Manager in the operational management of these services.
• Provide senior technical expertise for the team's operational support functions handling incidents, problems, service and change requests, in accordance with ITIL best practice.
• Use senior technical expertise to take a lead on continuous improvement activities, and the design, development, and implementation of longer-term strategic changes to services within the team's portfolio.
• Create and own all technical and operational documentation for areas of technical specialism.
• Maintain the security, confidentiality and integrity of information systems in accordance with regulation and IT security policies
• As part of project teams, work closely with team members, academic and professional staff, and external parties, providing technical leadership and expertise that supports all aspects of the implementation of high-quality digital solutions to meet university requirements.
• Develop new relevant specialist skills through tracking relevant technologies and industry developments and follow and advance professional project and team working practices.
• Mentor and coach members of the team to support their professional development assisting with recruitment and other activities to build team capacity.
• Be passionate about new IT and digital technologies and promote the IT operating model and IT and digital strategies.
You should apply if You have experience of supporting services and infrastructures related to platform services and providing specialist expertise to support the performance and availability of the core production environment, ensuring they meet agreed service levels, and works with 3rd party suppliers, where appropriate, to deliver an effective service to the university. You are able to lead and work as part of cross functional project teams, sometimes in order to rapidly undertake problem analysis and implement service change. This will involve ownership and execution of technical tasks specific to the expertise of the role, while ensuring change is managed and that the integrity of the production environment is protected. It is important that at this level, role holders take responsibility for mentoring and coaching junior team members, delivering training on their area of expertise.


• Proven experience in managing IT infrastructure, including data centres, servers, and storage.
• Hands-on experience with virtualization technologies, monitoring and backup. Including but not limited to VMware vSphere/VCF, Hyper-V, Microsoft Azure, Solarwinds, Veeam, HP Nimble/Alletra and Netapp.
• Good understanding of relevant supporting technologies, including Networking and cybersecurity
• Strong problem-solving and planning and organising skills
• Good interpersonal skills, capable of forming excellent long-term working relationships with colleagues.
• Demonstrable experience of undertaking projects in a technical environment.
• Knowledge of backup methodologies and disaster recovery techniques.
• Good understanding of enterprise storage platforms, availability features and protocols.
• A solid foundation in virtualisation technologies and associated management and availability features.
• Experience with enterprise monitoring platforms and associated protocols.