Senior Director Corporate Applications Development

About IRIS Software Group is one of the UK's largest privately held software companies, trusted by 100,000+ businesses, schools and accountancy firms to keep their operations running. Our software pays 1 in 6 UK employees, supports over 12,000 schools, and is relied on by 91 of the top 100 UK accountancy firms. We're a Great Place to Work® certified employer, recognised for our commitment to well-being, inclusion and development - and we're growing fast.

IRIS Software Group has supplied innovative administrative solutions to businesses, charities, and the public sector for over 40 years. We are close to 3000 employees in the IRIS family today with operations in the UK, Ireland, Romania, North America and India. We have very significant growth plans over the next 12-18 months to build upon our already impressive footprint. We have a clear M&A strategy and will acquire high performing, innovative cloud first tech businesses.

We exist to simplify the lives of businesses, schools and organizations, by providing software solutions and services that substantially enhance operational compliance, efficiency and accuracy, empowering the users of our technology to look forward with certainty and confidence.

We are in the midst of a significant investment to consolidate and transform our corporate application landscape, and we're looking for a strategic, hands-on Senior Director of Corporate Applications to lead that transformation - modernizing the systems that run our business and enabling IRIS to scale efficiently through continued growth and acquisition.

The Role & Purpose

• Own the strategy, roadmap, and operational health of our corporate/internal application estate, including CRM, ERP, billing, finance, and other business-critical SaaS platforms.
• Lead the consolidation and transformation of our corporate applications as part of a major, active investment program, reducing redundancy and simplifying how the business works.
• Partner with business stakeholders across Finance, Billing, Sales, Customer Success, and Operations to translate business needs into prioritized, well-governed system and process changes.
• Contribute directly to IRIS's M&A strategy by leading application and platform integration, consolidation, and (where relevant) divestment work for acquired and divested businesses.

You're passionate about the needs of the business and the people who rely on our internal systems every day. You'll inspire your team to put stakeholders at the center of what they do, working closely with business leaders to ensure aligned priorities and shared goals. You'll make sure our corporate applications strategy is deliverable, and play a pivotal role in ensuring the function has a reputation for reliability, responsiveness, and disciplined execution.

In short, we're looking for a technology and business systems leader with proven experience driving business system transformation. You'll manage cross-functional teams, build strong partnerships with business stakeholders, own platforms through into steady-state operation, and drive standardization that keeps us within the configuration boundaries of our hosted SaaS platforms rather than costly customization. One who is equally comfortable in Commercial, Operational, and Technology settings, can communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders, set priorities amid competing demands, and drive constant process improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Stakeholder Management & Business Transformation
  • Build trusted relationships with business leaders and stakeholders across the organization - using structured discovery and probing questions to fully understand their priorities - and translate those needs into a clear, prioritized applications roadmap and well-designed solutions.
  • Lead business process transformation initiatives, challenging "as-is" ways of working and driving adoption of standardized, efficient processes across corporate systems.
  • Balance competing priorities across multiple business functions, making transparent, well-justified trade-off decisions on scope, sequencing, and resourcing.
  • Act as a change agent, building organizational buy-in for new systems, consolidated platforms, and revised ways of working.
• Platform Consolidation & M&A
  • Lead the technical and functional consolidation of corporate applications following mergers, acquisitions, and divestments, ensuring minimal disruption to the business.
  • Own due diligence input and post-close integration planning for corporate systems (CRM, ERP, billing, finance) as part of the wider M&A process.
  • Drive the current large-scale investment program to consolidate our corporate applications footprint, reducing tool sprawl and duplicate functionality.
  • Develop and execute modernization, consolidation, and platform convergence plans across legacy and current-generation systems.
• Billing & Revenue Systems
  • Own the strategy and roadmap for billing and revenue systems, ensuring accurate, scalable invoicing and collections as the business grows and acquires new entities.
  • Lead consolidation of billing platforms and processes following acquisitions, ensuring a consistent, auditable billing experience across the business.
  • Partner with Finance and Revenue Operations to streamline quote-to-cash processes, reducing manual workarounds and billing errors.
  • Ensure billing systems integrate cleanly with CRM and ERP platforms to maintain a single source of truth for customer and revenue data.
• Application Reliability & Performance
  • Use Datadog (or equivalent) monitoring to proactively detect issues, identify emerging trends, and deflect incidents before they impact the business.
  • Own application performance tuning and capacity planning across the corporate applications estate, ensuring systems remain fast, stable, and reliable at scale.
  • Establish clear incident management, escalation, and post-incident review processes for corporate systems.
  • Track, analyze, and act on platform performance and reliability metrics, reporting on system health to business and technology leadership.
  • Serve as the final escalation point for the most complex application issues, drawing on deep platform expertise to drive rapid, expert-level resolution when standard support channels are exhausted.
• Solutions, Architecture & Documentation
  • Own architecture standards and governance for the corporate applications landscape, ensuring platform designs, integrations, and data flows are scalable, secure, and consistent.
  • Ensure comprehensive technical and process documentation is created and maintained across corporate systems, supporting audits, onboarding, and knowledge continuity.
  • Collect and analyze business and platform data - beyond system performance metrics - turning it into actionable insight that informs prioritization and investment decisions.
• Configuration Discipline & Platform Governance
  • Champion a configuration-first approach on hosted SaaS platforms, resisting unnecessary customization in favor of supported, upgrade-safe configuration.
  • Establish and continuously refine governance frameworks, policies, and processes for how corporate applications are changed, used, and supported - evaluating updates for long-term maintainability, upgrade impact, and total cost of ownership, and ensuring a compliant, consistent stakeholder experience.
  • Maintain a clear view of the corporate applications landscape to maximize the capabilities of platforms already in use.
• Team Management
  • Lead, mentor, and grow a team of business systems analysts, application administrators, and corporate systems engineers.
  • Foster a collaborative, accountable, and service-oriented team culture.
  • Manage relationships with SaaS vendors and implementation partners, holding them accountable to delivery commitments and service levels.
  • Establish skill development plans to build and maintain platform expertise across the team (e.g., Salesforce, Oracle NetSuite, and other corporate systems).
• Project & Vendor Management
  • Collaborate with Finance, Billing, Sales, and Customer Success teams to ensure timely, quality delivery of system enhancements and integrations.
  • Manage timelines, priorities, and resource allocation across multiple concurrent transformation projects.
  • Manage licensing, contracts, and renewals for corporate SaaS platforms in partnership with Procurement and Finance.
• Security & Compliance
  • Ensure corporate applications meet required service levels and the standards expected of modern Cloud/SaaS services.
  • Take a lead in establishing secure processes and access controls for corporate systems, managing risk in collaboration with Security and business leaders.
  • Take responsibility for data protection across corporate applications, ensuring compliance with GDPR and other relevant regulations.
  • Lead risk assessments and maintain secure environments for sensitive financial, billing, and customer data.

Qualifications

• Previous Director or Senior Director level leadership of a corporate applications, business systems, or internal IT function at a similarly sized (or larger) organization.
• Proven experience (15+ years) in corporate/business applications, with at least 10 years in a senior leadership role.
• Hands-on experience with Salesforce and/or Oracle NetSuite strongly preferred (platform certifications a plus); broader experience with corporate ERP, CRM, and billing/revenue systems also valued.
• Demonstrated success leading business system transformation and platform consolidation initiatives, ideally including post-acquisition or divestment integration.
• Direct experience supporting M&A activity - due diligence, platform consolidation, data migration, and system integration/divestment following acquisitions.
• Strong track record of stakeholder management across multiple business functions, including prioritization of competing demands.
• Track record of leveraging enterprise monitoring/APM tooling (e.g., Datadog) at scale, with measurable reductions in incident volume or mean time to resolution as a result.
• Deep understanding of the trade-offs between configuration and customization on hosted SaaS platforms, and a track record of driving configuration-first outcomes.
• Breadth of experience evaluating current-state technology landscapes and developing modernization, consolidation, and convergence plans.
• Commercially astute, with a clear ability to demonstrate the value of proposed investment or strategy, motivated by commercial and business-outcome KPIs.
• Proven track record of successfully delivering complex system and process transformation programs, at scale, on budget and on time.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and project management skills.
• Experience with Agile or hybrid project delivery methodologies.
• Familiarity with security best practices, especially regarding financial, billing, and customer data.
• Broad working knowledge of IT systems and infrastructure - including hardware, software, networks, databases, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, or GCP) - sufficient to make informed, well-grounded platform decisions.
• Working understanding of secure software development lifecycle (SDLC) principles as applied to configuration, customization, and integration work on hosted SaaS platforms.

Preferred Skills

• Experience integrating corporate applications via APIs and middleware/iPaaS tools.
• Prior involvement in scaling corporate systems to support a growing, multi-entity, or international organization.
• Experience operating in a private-equity-backed or highly acquisitive organization.

What Success Looks Like

• A corporate applications function trusted by the business to deliver:
• A consolidated, well-governed corporate applications landscape with reduced redundancy and lower total cost of ownership.
• The Corporate Applications function is seen as a trusted, embedded partner by business stakeholders - brought into decisions early rather than treated as an order-taker.
• A steady decline in stakeholder escalations, driven by proactive communication, stronger day-to-day partnership, and issues being resolved before they need to be escalated.
• Fast, proactive detection and resolution of issues, with incident volumes trending down over time.
• Smooth, low-disruption platform integration following acquisitions and divestments.
• A recognizable, responsive identity for the Corporate Applications function across IRIS.

Personal Qualities

• A proactive, energetic, pragmatic, hardworking individual with strong stakeholder management and team building skills.
• A sense of urgency - multi-tasking, prioritization skills, ability to collaborate, adapting to change.
• Excellent influencing, negotiating, organizational, analytical, problem solving, written and oral communication skills.
• A highly developed ability to deal with ambiguity and fluid situations.
• Strong people management skills, including developing and mentoring people within and outside of the team.
• Sound judgment and decision-making, even amid incomplete information or competing pressures.
• Ability to make sense of complex, high-volume, and sometimes contradictory information to solve problems effectively.
• A trusted, transparent leadership style that builds confidence and credibility across the organization.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and performance bonuses.
• Flexible remote work options.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Learning & development budget.
• Opportunity to shape the future of IRIS's corporate applications landscape during a period of significant investment and growth.

How to Apply

Submit your resume and a brief cover letter detailing your experience with corporate/business applications leadership, platform consolidation, and your interest in supporting IRIS's transformation journey.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• Impact: Your work will influence millions globally.
• Growth: Continuous learning and career development opportunities.
• Belonging: A culture that celebrates diversity and empowers every individual.

Ready to Apply?

Click Apply - we’re excited to learn about your unique perspective and experience. If you need adjustments during the process, let us know. We’re committed to making this opportunity accessible to everyone.

What to expect from our hiring process

Our process is designed to be fair, transparent and straightforward. Stages vary depending on the role — more senior positions may involve additional steps, and some areas include role-specific assessments such as a technical test or case study — but typically you can expect:

• Application review — we assess your experience and potential
• Initial call — a short conversation to learn about you and share more about the role
• Skills assessment — tailored to the position, e.g. case study, coding challenge or portfolio review
• Final interview — meet the team and explore how you'll make an IMPACT at IRIS

We'll always walk you through the specific stages at the start of the process so you can prepare with confidence. If you need any adjustments or accommodations during the process, let us know, we’re committed to making this experience accessible for everyone.