Head of Platforms and Infrastructure

Salary: £75,000 - £85,000 per annum

Employment type: Permanent

Hours per week: 37

Reporting into: Deputy IT Director

Department: IT

This role operates primarily on a remote working arrangement that will require little to no travel into our Coventry head office or various campuses. Our working model arrangements are a non-contractual benefit.

About Arden University: We are an aspirational and multi-award-winning university, delivering rapid growth with ambitious plans to disrupt the HE sector through our passion for innovation and digital education. Our vision is to become the first-choice university for career-focused lifelong learners worldwide, ensuring that everyone, everywhere can access higher education.

About our Department: The Head of Platforms and Infrastructure sits within our Technology Department that is crucial to making sure our employees and students can work effectively, deliver projects, find the right solutions and ensure we develop the technology that will make the biggest difference. Our IT team is made up of around 65 employees with a vast range of skills from Software Development to IT Operations and Security. Our IT Department values employee development and we have lots of great examples of employee progression and promotions within the team.

About the Opportunity: As the Head of Platforms & Infrastructure, you will actively support the digital transformation agenda by leading strategic initiatives to optimise technology stacks, enhance operational excellence, and ensure the secure, reliable, and cost-effective delivery of digital services. You will be responsible for the strategic direction and hands-on management of DevOps tooling, cloud platforms (AWS & Azure), Systems Integration and the broader IT infrastructure, ensuring alignment with Arden’s priorities and compliance requirements. This role is responsible for developing and implementing modern DevOps practices, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), cloud-native technologies, and infrastructure automation, ensuring our platforms are optimised for performance, resilience, and security. You will lead and manage the technology teams ensuring they work collaboratively to deliver scalable, high-performing digital platforms. By aligning platform engineering with cutting-edge software development, you will help drive security, reliability, efficiency, innovation, and seamless integration across university systems. Working closely with the IT Operations, Information Security, Product Owners and Development Leads, you will bridge the gap between infrastructure and software development, aligning DevOps, cloud computing, and automation with AI-driven innovations and forward-thinking software engineering. You will also serve as a mentor and technical leader, championing best practices in platform engineering, AI-powered monitoring, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC).

About You: You'll need experience / knowledge with the following tech:

• AWS: EC2, VPC, RDS, S3, Cloudfront, Route 53, IAM, CloudWatch, EKS.
• Deploying and maintaining Linux systems (e.g. Ubuntu, RHEL, Amazon Linux).
• Relevant application platforms such as Apache, Nginx, HAProxy, MySQL, RabbitMQ, Redis etc.
• Dev/Ops practices including automation, CI & CD Pipelines (e.g. Bitbucket, Jenkins), GitOps.
• Working closely with development teams to aid in the fulfilment and improvement of the software development lifecycle.
• Containerisation technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker.
• Managing and automating code deployments and CI/CD pipelines, especially using Jenkins and Terraform.
• Migrating on-premise infrastructure to cloud services.
• Managing and maintaining backup services (e.g. Veeam or similar).
• Infrastructure monitoring, reporting and centralised logging solutions.
• Infrastructure as code tools such as Terraform and/or AWS-CDK.
• Storage technologies (e.g. Nimble).
• Azure and M365.
• Lambda and ECS.
• Zero-trust architectures.
• MS Active Directory / Azure AD / GPO / DNS / DHCP / Certificate Services / DFS.
• Networking wired and wireless technologies (such as Cisco Meraki).
• Knowledge of MCM - usage, management and packaging.

Why Arden: At Arden, you will become a part of a passionate and dedicated team who are committed to removing unnecessary barriers to learning and making education more accessible. Our people work hard to ensure our students' journeys are the best they can possibly be, as such we want to reward our people with fantastic benefits. Employees benefit from:

• 30 days holiday + bank holidays on-top, and even a Christmas closure!
• A generous Aviva pension plan, company contributions starting from 7%.
• SimplyHealth plan option.
• Private Medical Insurance coverage (applies to certain job roles).
• Access to Perkbox benefits.
• Study any Arden course for free, with a discount for all family and friends.
• Plus, other excellent benefits.
• Our ‘Golden Ticket’ which allows you to gift anyone in your life a free Arden education.

Our Values: Stand out, Progressive, Accessible, Resourceful, Kindness, reflect who we are as an institution, a team and as individuals. If they also reflect you and you are excited by the chance to be the driving, creative force within a growing business, we want to hear from you.

Closing Date: 15th Feb. We reserve the right to close this vacancy before the specified closing date should we receive sufficient applications or in order to respond to business needs. In order to avoid missing an opportunity to apply please submit your application as early as possible.

If you are a current Arden student or have an upcoming course with us, you are not eligible to apply for Student Experience roles due to a conflict of interest related to system access.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion: Arden University is proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. This means that if you have a disability, as defined by the Disability Equality Act 2010, you may be guaranteed an interview if you meet the essential criteria for the role. If you wish to be considered under this scheme, you can indicate via the application form below. As an Equal Opportunity Employer we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Sponsorship statement: Please be aware that some roles may not meet the points requirement for a sponsored Skilled Worker visa under the points-based immigration system. However, we welcome applications from candidates who do not currently have the right to work in the UK but may be eligible for a visa through an alternative route.