Group IT Solutions and Development Director

Connells Group is the leading UK estate agency and property services group, with over 80 different brands and 1,250 branches UK-wide. Alongside a significant high street estate agency presence, it has a strong financial services business operation, offeringall services to support sales, purchases, lettings, mortgages, building surveys & valuations, conveyancing, auctions and more.
The Group IT Solutions & Development Director role reports directly into the Group CTO and is part of the IT leadership team. The role is both strategic in shaping technology strategies, and technical, by leading a significant internal engineering functionas well as managing the technical relationship of many suppliers.
Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities
- Development of the IT systems strategy covering technical roadmaps to deliver effective solutions.
- Continuous development of the technology landscape with a focus on systems and solutions, providing a better experience for our colleague and customers.
- Continuous improvement of delivery methods & software engineering to reduce the timeline to deliver technology change with an ongoing aim to improve the quality of change implemented.
- Maintain a strong awareness of technology trends, driving innovation opportunities to deliver future growth and operational efficiencies
- Management of a complex portfolios of technology change across all business areas.
- Implementation of best practice engineering processes.
- Maintaining good financial control of the department, leveraging economies of scale by ensuring we have fewer more strategic partners and reducing unnecessary expenditure.

Experience and Qualifications
- Preferably educated to graduate level
- Experience of working within organisations with multiple separate subsidiaries and brands beneath it, ideally with a significant high street presence
- Built, managed and grown internal multi-disciplined engineering teams
- Driving force who leads and encourages teams to meet and exceed goals and targetsPossess a strong architecture understanding and managed teams of architects, developers and testers
- Understanding of GDPR principles including data retention and anonymisation procedures & policies
- Background in operating within an IT leadership team, having strong leadership, influence and communications skills and working collaboratively with other members of the ITLT
- Helped drive excellence in the software development lifecycle
- Experience of “big data” including aligning and integrating internal and third party datasets together and making use of this for reporting and BI purposes
- Experience and knowledge of Microsoft.NET and Azure development technologies, software development lifecycles, IT process and delivery methods
- Ensure products are delivered to business customers with high quality and reliability
- Must be able to work collaboratively with a range of business leaders across the organisation, and with external stakeholders at a similar technical level
- Evidence of adaptability and flexibility to changing business demands
- Background of leadership responsibilities including risk management and departmental budget responsibility