University of Essex

Director of Innovation and Technology

Remuneration: Competitive plus pension  

Location: Colchester, Essex, South East England

The Opportunity

This is an exciting opportunity for a transformative, customer driven, and collaborative IT leader to head up the delivery of the IT services and business change functions across the University of Essex. Our new Director of Innovation and Technology will deliver the modern technology to underpin the University’s ambitious goals. The Director will take the strategic lead for technology, working across the University, building trusted partner relationships, and creating a compelling vision and transformative roadmap.

The University of Essex is the UK’s University of the Year (Times Higher Education Awards 2018). We’re part of an elite group of ‘dual intensive’ universities, gold rated for teaching excellence (Teaching Excellence Framework 2017) and top 25 for research in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2019.

With more than 16,000 students and more than 4,000 staff, we also rank 29th in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide.

This role represents an exceptional opportunity for a visionary technology leader to set and deliver the future of information technology provision and business change at Essex.

The Role:

• Operate as a senior leader across the University, building collaborative relationships with key academic and professional service stakeholders in order to cement trust and understand the demand for IT solutions and change.
• Create a transformative, aligned IT strategy and technology roadmap, to deliver enhancements in IT performance, customer experience and the ability of the University to make evidence-based decisions.
• Build a well-governed, prioritised and deliverable portfolio of IT and business change programmes.
• Provide strong functional leadership to the IT and business change teams, driving clarity of responsibility and process. Build a team culture which puts the user at the heart of what it does, ensuring technology is embedded intelligently in the University’s operations, and that the team has a reputation for reliable, outstanding delivery.   

The Candidate:

• With significant exposure to complex, information-intensive environments, you will have the ability to understand the needs of a diverse organisation. You will also demonstrate the vision and strategy-setting skills to enable these needs to be met.
• Collegiate and collaborative in approach, you will be an outstanding communicator able to build relationships proactively with strategic level stakeholders both across the University and at partner organisations.
• An enthusiastic people leader, you will have the proven ability to galvanise large IT and change teams, creating customer-focused cultures and articulating the benefits of adopting new approaches and ways of working.

To hear more about this exciting opportunity, apply now by following the link: www.odgers.com/71939

For a confidential discussion, contact Alex Richardson at our retained search consultants; Odgers Berndtson at alex.richardson@odgers.com  or on 0161 498 3407