Lead Developer - Integrations - IT services - 107633 - Grade 8

Position Details

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range 47,389 to 56,535 with potential progression once in post to 63,606

Grade: 8

Full Time, Permanent

Closing date: 24th August 2026

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do. The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Background

Department overview

Over the next decade, our aspiration is to establish Birmingham in the top 50 of the world's leading universities. That's a pretty big aspiration, and high-quality digital services and infrastructure are crucial to achieving it. In recognition of that, a brand-new Digital Strategy combined with significant investments in technology mean this is an exciting time to join IT Services, ‘making IT happen’ at the University of Birmingham.

We want to attract outstanding, inspirational, and talented people, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. It's our role to ensure that our community has access to accessible, responsive, resilient, and secure systems and support. What we do enables our students, staff, researchers, visitors and partners to confidently and creatively use digital services, technology and data for the benefit of their learning, teaching, research or work. The culture of IT Services is one of innovation, collaboration, excellence, and inclusivity, and we apply the principles of customer focus and continuous improvement to everything we do.

Role Summary

The primary responsibility of the Lead Developer (Integration and Systems) is to deliver quality software solutions on time and to budget that meet the needs of the organisation and to provide third line support for those solutions once they are live.

Main Duties

• Solutions architecture: Leads the development of system integration and internal bespoke solution architectures for complex systems, ensuring consistency with specified requirements agreed with both external, and internal customers and the Business Analyst.
• Systems development management: Defines solution development projects which support the organisation's objectives and plans.
• Systems design: Specifies and designs large or complex integration and systems software.
• Systems integration: Designs and builds integration components and interfaces.
• Programming/software development: Sets local or team-based standards for programming tools and techniques.
• Testing: Accepts responsibility for creation of test cases using own in-depth technical analysis of both functional and non-functional specifications.
• Software release and deployment: Assesses and analyses release components.
• Porting/software configuration: When required leads a team, providing expert technical knowledge in the systems testing of platform-specific versions of the software products.
• Technical specialism: Provides leadership and guidelines to promote the development and exploitation of applications and technologies in the organisation.
• Supplier management and sourcing: Reviews business cases and determines appropriate procurement routes.
• Contract management: Sources and collects contract performance data and monitors performance against KPIs.
• Relationship and stakeholder management: Implements stakeholder engagement/communications plans.
• Risk and sustainability management: Investigates and reports on hazards and potential risk events within the Integration and System Development function.
• Project management: When required defines, documents and carries out small projects or sub-projects.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

Educated to degree level or equivalent qualification plus substantial work experience in a relevant technical/scientific and/or management/supervisory role in a specialist area. Proven technical specialist knowledge and understanding in a relevant technical area. Meaningful and relevant experience of integration development using Azure services: Logic Apps, Service Bus, API Management, Event Grid, Azure Functions, and Azure Data Factory. Experience of C# development. Experience using Git and GitHub. Experience of using Terraform. Experience writing and applying automated tests. Experience creating and maintaining Continuous Deployment/Continuous Integration pipelines using GitHub actions. Experience of developing databases and stored procedures on Microsoft SQL Server.

Must be able to effectively communicate with user/customer areas to understand their requirements and then deliver them. Must have good supervisory and coaching skills to manage, motivate and develop staff. Must have strong people and project management skills where needed. Proven analytical and problem solving skills with sufficient technical skill and knowledge to be able to act as a mentor and coach. Must have strong software and solution development experience with a proven record of delivering and supporting complex integration and software solutions in medium to large organisations, on time and to budget. Experience of delivery methodologies such as Kanban, Scrum and other agile approaches. Evidence of literacy and numeracy.

Experience of championing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in own work area. Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation, policies, procedures are applied.

Informal enquiries to Carl Finikin, email: c.b.finikin@bham.ac.uk