Senior Technical Specialist - Davies Consulting

The role of the Senior Technical Lead is to be the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for one, or multiple, IT services and technologies, to support and enhance their effectiveness, security and stability. The role involves a mix of technical leadership, operations management, and process improvement whilst working closely with the Technical Operations Manager.

The Senior Technical Support Lead will apply their depth of technical knowledge, alongside excellent analytical capability to support complex incidents, which exceed the knowledge and skills of the Service Operations team and Technical Operations Analysts. The Senior Technical Support Lead will also be responsible for identifying, planning and delivering service improvements to improve their operational efficiency. This could be technical enhancements, automation of operational tasks, enhanced service monitoring or by documenting and supporting training of other members of the wider IT team.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership

• Act as the subject matter expert for one or more technologies maintaining a deep understanding of the design and implementation within Davies.
• Support the team and where necessary lead efforts to analyse failures and incidents deeply, ensuring that root causes are identified and addressed in line with Problem Management processes.
• Continuously evaluate and improve monitoring tools and alerting systems to catch issues before they impact users.
• Participate in the formulation of the technology strategy, particularly how it relates to the scalability and reliability of operations.
• Take ownership of the operational roadmap to ensure there are clear plans for patching, upgrades and other key proactive maintenance activities.
• Ensure that end of support/end of life and major upcoming changes are tracked and communicated so that BAU small changes or projects are initiated when required.
• Identify and implement new technologies and practices that can improve service operations, reduce costs, or increase efficiency.

• Ensure that services are reliable, available, and performing optimally.
• Design and implement strategies to enhance uptime and minimize outages.
• Major Incident management: Lead the technical response to major incidents ensuring there is a clear understanding of faults, coordination with other technical staff to avoid skills/knowledge gaps, robust resolution plans and identification of underlying problems for post incident resolution.
• Automation and Tooling: Identify, develop and oversee the automation of repetitive tasks, such as deployments, monitoring, and reporting, to improve efficiency and reduce human error.
• Guide the team in managing and optimizing all infrastructure, ensuring it meets the operational requirements.

• Provide technical mentorship to the operations team, helping them grow their skills.
• Provide feedback to the People Leads to support performance reviews and help feedback on any areas for growth identified by you.
• Implement and refine operational processes to improve efficiency and service performance, in line with agreed ISO standards, supported by the wider Service Operations Management Team.
• Collaborate with Tech Ops Manager, responsible for creating robust frameworks and implementing best practices to ensure seamless operations, while providing critical support to design teams in optimizing and enhancing operational efficiency.
• Change Management: Oversee the process for deploying changes to production, ensuring that proper testing and rollback strategies are in place.
• Capacity Planning: Anticipate future service demands and plan for infrastructure scaling and resource allocation accordingly.
• Knowledge Management: Maintain and expand documentation related to systems, processes, and troubleshooting guides to enhance the team's operational knowledge.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Significant experience in the delivery of projects and BAU support of IT Infrastructure and associated technologies in a large scale enterprise environment.
• Significant technical experience in key technologies, such as:

• Windows Server OS
• Microsoft technologies - Active Directory, Exchange, Certificate Services, IIS, SQL Azure IaaS
• Wired and Wireless networks
• Firewalls
• Load balancers
• Enterprise backup systems
• End User Compute and Mobile Device Management (e.g. Intune)
• Remote access solutions (VPN, VDI etc)

Benefits

Davies are committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome candidates of all genders, gender identity and expression, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, nationality, and belief (or lack thereof). Davies benefits and employee policies are ever-evolving. Currently some of our highlights include:

• Reward platform - discounts for over 800 retailers.
• 25 days holiday (rising with service).
• EAP with virtual GP.
• 2 x paid volunteering days.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave policies.
• Fostering friendly and fertility support employer.
• Pension - matched contribution up to 5%.
• Life Assurance (4 x basic salary).
• Development, training, and professional qualifications where applicable.