Job Title: IT Manager

Location: Hybrid Role - One Angel Square and WFH (initially work from One Angel Square until inducted within IT and then 1 to 2 days from home)

Rate of Pay: £500 per day Umbrella OR £384.62 per day PAYE

Working Hours: Monday to Friday 37 hours

Type: Temporary Assignment - 3 Months +

Opus People Solutions are working with West Northamptonshire Council to recruit for a IT Manager. An experienced IT Manager is required to temporarily manage a team of 9 highly skilled technicians, including contractors, working within the Infrastructure Team. In this role, using your proven understanding and deep knowledge of IT operations, you will be responsible for overseeing and managing all aspects of the IT infrastructure comprising datacentres, servers, M365, networks and telephony operations, providing essential and reliable IT services. In addition, you will not only be responsible for managing the team's workload - ensuring that operational projects (upgrades, implementations, software patching etc) and Business As Usual work is completed on time and to budget, but also for the motivation, development and staff management of the team.

Technical Requirements:

• Excellent working technical knowledge across IT Infrastructure technologies including Microsoft Windows Server, Storage (SAN), Active Directory/Microsoft Entra ID, Group Policy, Authentication methods, virtualisation (VMWare) and network/ switching services (DNS, DHCP etc) within an enterprise level environment across a Wide Area Network (WAN).
• Strong experience of managing and working with Citrix Server and Citrix products
• Strong functional knowledge of all components in the overall IT landscape including networks, cloud and hosting technologies (Azure, AWS etc), servers, end-user-devices, operating systems and applications.
• Experience of working with Windows Virtual Desktop (AVD) and any associated migrations to this product advantageous
• Knowledge of administration and deployment of Infrastructure Monitoring Tools - SCOM, Vantage DX, Solarwinds etc
• Excellent knowledge in the use and support of M365 suite - particularly Excel, Word, Teams and SharePoint.

Essential Criteria

• Significant experience in a leadership or technical management role is crucial - this includes all elements of managing and motivating technical teams.
• Significant experience of project management in a technical management role.
• ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) certification.
• Experience with vendor negotiations and stakeholder communication is essential.
• Must have a solid understanding of the IT technologies in use and be aware of the direction of travel of technology and technical innovations.
• Experience in handling IT emergencies, such as system downtime or security breaches, and effectively leading teams through such events.
• Experience of working collaboratively with technical and non-technical stakeholders and adjusting communication style to suit the audience.
• A degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems or a related field or equivalent proven working experience.
• Ideally, but not essential, a strong track record working in government bodies or the wider public sector

Key Personnel Attributes include:

• Minimum of 10 - 15 years experience in a technical leadership role.
• Strategically minded technology leader with strong business acumen and proven success in building, leading and developing IT technical teams focusing on collating, prioritising and allocating and delivering the workload accordingly.
• Possesses strong interpersonal skills that facilitate strong working relationships with colleagues and stakeholders and brings an engaging leadership style that achieves buy-in and drives action.
• You will be able to ignite an excitement for change within the Infrastructure department through ongoing enthusiasm for IT.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills as regular customer interaction required (face-to-face, Email, Teams etc) with the ability to convey technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Motivated, self-starter who is tenacious and driven to achieve in fast paced and moving environment.
• Proven ability to guide technical teams in analysing complex issues, troubleshoot effectively, and provide timely resolutions in a fast-paced environment possessing a logical and methodical approach to structured problem-solving and critical thinking techniques.
• Solid understanding of IT security principles and practices (CyberEssentials, GDPR/DPA), including user access control, data encryption, authentication techniques, vulnerability management, the importance of software patching and incident response.
• Strong documentation skills are essential with the ability to produce high quality and detailed documentation as necessary and as directed.

For more information or to process your application for this role, please apply online now.