Job description and selection criteria

Job title / Team Leader (Infrastructure and Hosting, Systems and Databases Management Group)
Division /

UAS

Department /

IT Services

Location / Parks Road, Oxford
Grade and salary / Grade 9: £44,620 -£51,702 per annum
Hours / Full time
Contract type / Permanent
Reporting to / Head of Systems and Databases Management Group
Vacancy reference / 117102
Additional information

Introduction

The University

The University of Oxford is a complex and stimulating organisation, which enjoys an international reputation as a world-class centre of excellence in research and teaching. It employs over 10,000 staff and has a student population of over 21,000.

Most staff are directly appointed and managed by one of the University’s 130 departments or other units within a highly devolved operational structure - this includes 5,900 ‘academic-related’ staff (postgraduate research, computing, senior library, and administrative staff) and 2,820 ‘support’ staff (including clerical, library, technical, and manual staff). There are also over 1,600 academic staff (professors, readers, lecturers), whose appointments are in the main overseen by a combination of broader divisional and local faculty board/departmental structures. Academics are generally all also employed by one of the 38 constituent colleges of the University as well as by the central University itself.

Our annual income in 2012/13 was £1,086.9m. Oxford is one of Europe's most innovative and entrepreneurial universities: income from external research contracts exceeds £436.8m p.a., and more than 70 spin-off companies have been created.

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University Administration and Services

University Administration and Services (UAS) is the collective term for the central administrative departments of the University. UAS comprises structures to:

  • support the University’s core academic purposes of teaching, learning and research;
  • ensure the University can meet the requirements of government, funding bodies and other external agencies; and
  • facilitate the attainment of the objectives set out in the University’s Strategic Plan.

The offices of the UAS sections are spread across the city centre, with the main University Offices located in Wellington Square.

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IT Services

The role of IT Services is to ensure that the University of Oxford has the modern, robust, reliable, high-performing and leading-edge IT facilities it requires to support the distinctive needs of those engaged in teaching, learning, research, administration and strategic planning.

IT Services is a new department which brings together the University’s three existing IT service departments: Business Services and Projects, Oxford University Computing Services and the ICT Support Team. The new department came into being on 1 August 2012 but this is only the start of a complex change programme designed to ensure that the department is optimally configured to meet existing and future IT challenges.

IT Services, headed by the University’s Chief Information Officer, has 300 staff across 5 buildings and an annual budget of £19M.

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Infrastructure Services

Infrastructure Services is the largest group within IT Services, with responsibility for supporting infrastructure and services critical to the University's business of education, research and administration. Infrastructure Services comprises groups responsible for networks, telecommunications, systems and database management, shared and chargeable services. Teams within Infrastructure Services comprise a mixture of roles, including system administrators, software developers, technical architects, service managers, project managers, customer support and liaison. Staff are expected to make a significant contribution to both the maintenance and improvement of services, and to the successful delivery of projects.

Job Description

Overview of the role

This post provides leadership for the Infrastructure and Hosting team together with systems administration and development within the Systems and Databases Management Group of Infrastructure Services. The postholder leads a team and takes a leading role in the design, implementation, and management of systems providing critical services to the University. The postholder is expected to engage fully with the change management programme being undertaken by IT Services, including the development of Infrastructure Services as a coherent group.

Responsibilities/duties

  • Manage the Infrastructure and Hosting team, including recruitment, induction, staff development and resource allocation.
  • Have operational responsibility for the services and infrastructure assigned to the team, including leading the design, implementation and management of supported IT services.
  • Formulate operational plans, continuous service improvements, and development road-maps, ensuring services and infrastructure remain secure, current and provisioned and supported in line with recognised best practice.
  • Take a leading role in the procurement, and installation of hardware; configuration of server infrastructure; and deployment of applications within a production environment.
  • Contribute to user requirements analysis and strategic planning for service delivery.
  • Plan and, where applicable, contribute to the deployment of operating system and application upgrades, security patches and other standard system management tasks.
  • Plan and carry out changes to services in communication with other groups and the wider University IT support community.
  • Define and document operational procedures.
  • Investigate new technologies and applications, contributing technical expertise to decision-making within the Department and sharing such expertise with technical specialists and other colleagues within the Department and wider University.
  • Deputise for the Group Manager when appropriate.
  • Participate in a regular Staff Development Review.
  • Take advantage of appropriate training opportunities as these arise, in order to keep up to date with relevant skills and developments.
  • Undertake other duties as may be assigned in the light of the post-holder’s knowledge and experience.

Selection criteria

Essential

  • Educated to degree level and/or relevant employment experience.
  • Demonstrable experience or potential of providing leadership to a highly expert technical team and ability to develop innovative solutions through the application of specialist knowledge;
  • Familiarity with processes and recommended practice associated with IT service operations;
  • Ability to plan, prioritise and manage resources within a collaborative team-based environment;
  • Familiarity with IT systems lifecycle management, from design, through to implementation and management;
  • Ability to develop strategy for IT systems and infrastructure applications to deliver best practices and taking account of current and emerging organisational requirements and initiatives as well as emerging developments in related technology.
  • Proven expertise in advanced Unix/Linux systems administration;
  • Understanding of TCP/IP networks.
  • Extensive knowledge of current technologies for supporting two or more of the following: identity and access management (e.g. LDAP, Kerberos); distributed file systems (e.g. AFS); Web application development; virtualisation; systems management and monitoring;
  • Experience of maintaining IT systems in a service environment, including an understanding of enterprise security issues;
  • Excellent communications skills, including the presentation of complex technical ideas, and the production of accurate written documentation;
  • Proven ability to develop and enhance expertise in relevant areas of knowledge;
  • Demonstrable experience of organising a busy and varied workload requiring self-motivation and excellent time management skills.

Desirable

  • Experience of IT service provision within a university environment;
  • Demonstrable, practical knowledge of techniques to ensure resilience and disaster recovery for enterprise services;
  • Familiarity with applications development and deployment using one or more of: Java/J2EE (preferred), Perl, C, LAMP (particularly Apache/MySQL).
  • Familiarity with, or certification in, ITIL;
  • Experience of budget planning and management;
  • Experience of managing technical infrastructure projects;
  • Experience of transitioning service supporting infrastructure project phase to production service.
  • Experience of working in a multi-platform IT environment with an ability to understand and resolve interoperability issues;
  • Experience of writing, or contributing to, the development of business cases for funding;
  • The skills and experience to become an effective member of the team as quickly as possible.

Working at the University of Oxford

For further information about working at Oxford, please see:

117102 IAH Team Lead Job Description1