Director of Digital And IT

Who We Are:

Frieze is the world’s leading platform for modern and contemporary art, dedicated to artists, galleries, collectors and art lovers alike. Frieze comprises three magazines – frieze, Frieze Masters Magazine and Frieze Week – and five international art fairs – Frieze London, Frieze Masters, Frieze New York, Frieze Los Angeles and Frieze Seoul. In October 2021, Frieze also launched No.9 Cork Street, a permanent space for visiting international galleries in the heart of Mayfair, London.

What You'll Do:

Working closely with the CEO and Business Development team, this role consists of two pillars:

• leading a team of experts in the digital software development space, developing and maintaining our suite of business-critical digital products.
• managing the company’s IT infrastructure, developing and implementing the company’s technology vision and strategy to support business goals.

You will be responsible for overseeing product development, managing architecture and infrastructure, driving research and innovation, ensuring security and stability, handling departmental budgets, leading strategic planning and execution, and fostering stakeholder relationships.

You will lead teams who are responsible for several B2C and B2B websites, mobile applications, APIs and numerous supporting SaaS products such as CRMs, CMSs and other services which underpin the architecture and our processes.

You will also play a critical role in shaping and developing the company’s future corporate IT strategy, whether that involves in-house IT teams, outsourcing or a combination of both.

Your knowledge should extend to regulatory and compliance, both in the digital and IT space. This should include working knowledge of GDPR, encryption, cyber security, audits and general data and security best practices.

Whilst this is not an engineering role, you should nevertheless understand the role of both digital software engineers (ideally having some development experience) and IT teams, enabling you to lead engineering and strategy discussions related to software development methodologies and IT requirements.

Main Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and line management for the engineering and digital product teams, fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. Identify and eliminate inefficiencies. Implement new best practice processes.
• Work with the product and engineering teams to define and refine the digital and IT roadmaps, ensuring alignment with business goals and objectives.
• Lead and facilitate architecture and systems technical discussions with the wider engineering teams, ensuring products are scalable, secure, high-performance and reliable.
• Build a culture of continued learning, collaboration and accountability throughout the whole department.
• Proactively identify new tools and technology solutions that can support, enhance and improve our offerings and streamline operations.
• Ensure our fair operations run smoothly and efficiently and guest experience is flawless with regards to digital and IT touchpoints.
• Collaborate with the business leaders of other departments, ensuring cross-departmental relationships are maintained and improved upon.
• Assume full responsibility for the departmental budgets, ensuring resources are allocated appropriately and efficiently.
• Lead the recruitment efforts, ensuring we continue to attract great talent who align with our departmental and company culture.

Our Software Engineering Tech Stack

This role requires a wide range of knowledge and experience across the whole digital and technical ecosystem; however, our current stack consists of:

• Websites built using Next.js and Node.js
• Headless CMS using Drupal
• APIs written in PHP
• Hosting using Heroku
• Apps written in React Native
• AWS for other services – S3, WAF, Cloudfront, RDS, EC2, Route53

You Have These:

• Strong leadership and influencing skills across all areas of a business
• Strong communicator who is clear and concise
• Takes a view and makes creative suggestions
• Excellent presentation skills – visually for packs and orally for meetings
• Good at working with the senior team to give and get information
• Hires A Players and nurtures talent
• Follows through on commitments
• Takes responsibility
• Open to criticism and feedback – wants to learn and constantly improve
• Interest in the Arts

Working Conditions:

Permanent, London Surrey Street

Mon-Fri, Hybrid – 10am-6pm