About us

Every day, we deliver safe and secure energy to homes, communities, and businesses, connecting people to the energy they need for their lives. Our expertise and track record position us uniquely to shape the sustainable future of our industry as the pace of change accelerates. To succeed, we must anticipate customer needs, reduce energy delivery costs, and pioneer flexible energy systems. This requires delivering on our promises and seeking opportunities for growth.

In IT and Digital, we collaborate closely with the diverse energy businesses within the National Grid group, revolutionizing operations through technology. Embracing Agile methodologies and Digital mindsets, we drive efficiency and bring new capabilities to internal and external customers as we lead the charge towards a carbon-free future.

Our work is critical, as National Grid powers millions of homes and businesses in the UK and US, and the technology we employ is vital to this task. The successful applicant for this position will play a crucial role in our mission, supported by our multicultural, customer-centric global team, with opportunities for professional development.

National Grid is hiring a Platform Technical Lead Infrastructure and Ops. This position can be based form our London or Warwick office - with a hybrid working policy in place.

Job Purpose

In the role of Director and Platform Technical Lead Infrastructure and Ops, you will have the additional responsibility of overseeing on-premise data center and cloud Azure architecture. Your purpose is to develop and implement platform-wide architecture and processes that align with the organization's strategic goals, ensuring seamless integration between on-premise and cloud environments. By providing strategic leadership and guidance to stakeholders, identifying market trends and business benefits, and managing governance practices, you will contribute to our vision and ensure the organization's success.

What you'll do

As an employee in the Director, Platform Technical Lead role, your key roles and responsibilities will include:

• Drive the strategic technology direction of the Platform, supporting the overall strategy set by the Platform Lead. This includes establishing a technology runway and creating an integrated technology roadmap working with the platform owner that aligns architecture, engineering, technology, and Platform priorities
• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand their requirements and develop architectural solutions that effectively meet their needs, ensuring alignment with on-premise data center and cloud Azure architecture.
• Define and implement architecture solutions for monitoring and observability across the platform, ensuring that the necessary tools and practices are in place to effectively monitor and measure the performance, availability, and health of the systems.
• Evaluate new technologies and tools in collaboration with Chapter Leads and Architecture to assess their potential impact on the organization's architecture and make informed decisions.
• Conduct architecture reviews to ensure compliance with established standards and identify areas for improvement, specifically related to on-premise data center and cloud Azure architecture.
• Work closely with teams to ensure that architecture is incorporated into their plans and that design decisions align with architectural standards, providing guidance and support throughout the process.
• Provide leadership and guidance to the architecture team, including mentoring and coaching team members to foster professional growth and ensure their contributions align with on-premise data center and cloud Azure architecture goals.
• Stay up-to-date on emerging trends and best practices in architecture by actively participating in industry forums and conferences, ensuring that the organization remains informed and adaptable in the evolving technology landscape.
• Evaluate and select appropriate monitoring and observability tools, technologies, and frameworks to meet the organization's needs, considering factors such as scalability, reliability, and ease of use.
• Establish best practices and guidelines for implementing monitoring and observability across the platform, ensuring consistency and adherence to architectural standards.
• Work closely with engineering teams to ensure that monitoring and observability are integrated into the development lifecycle, enabling proactive identification and resolution of issues.
• Provide leadership and guidance to the architecture team, including mentoring and coaching team members.

About you

• Master's Degree in a relevant discipline, or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience. Or a BS/BA degree or higher in a technical discipline in the US, or the UK equivalent.
• 10 or more years of relevant experience.
• 5 or more years of people management experience with relevant industry and professional certifications.
• Experience in strategic technology leadership, IT infrastructure, analytics, and outsourcing management.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal abilities, including articulating complex ideas and influencing in a matrix environment.
• Strong ability to lead a diverse team with inclusive culture across geographical boundaries.
• Develop trusted relationships with key stakeholders to deliver desired business outcomes
• Hands on knowledge of front to back technology development of complex systems. Strong planning, analytical, and conceptual skills
• In-depth knowledge of Azure Cloud services and architecture:
• Extensive expertise in designing, implementing, and optimizing cloud-based solutions using Azure services. Strong understanding of Azure architecture patterns, best practices, and industry standards.
• Proficiency in Azure networking concepts, including virtual networks (VNets), subnets, network security groups (NSGs), load balancers, and Azure Virtual WAN. Experience in designing and implementing secure and scalable network architectures within Azure.
• Strong understanding of Azure security principles and best practices, including identity and access management (IAM), Azure Active Directory (AAD), role-based access control (RBAC), Azure Security Center, and Azure Sentinel. Ability to design and implement secure and compliant Azure environments.
• Experience in defining and managing Azure policies to enforce governance, compliance, and security standards across Azure resources. Knowledge of policy definitions, assignments, and remediation actions to ensure adherence to organizational guidelines.
• Proficiency in AWX (Ansible Tower) for automation and orchestration, along with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and management. Ability to leverage these tools to automate deployments, configuration management, and infrastructure as code (IaC) practices.
• Strong understanding of Kubernetes concepts and experience in designing and managing containerized applications using AKS. Proficiency in cluster management, scaling, monitoring, deployment strategies, and containerization within Azure.
• Proficiency in leveraging standard vendor tools as well as Azure observability and monitoring services, establish comprehensive operational monitoring and visibility across Azure environments. Ability to design and implement monitoring solutions that provide real-time insights, proactive alerting, AI Ops and performance optimizations for Azure and on-premise resources.
• Solid background in Azure hosting services, such as Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure VMs, and Azure Container Instances. Ability to design and optimize hosting environments for different workloads, considering factors like scalability, availability, and cost efficiency.
• Must be an excellent communicator, highly effective in stakeholder engagement. This will include strong written and verbal communication and presentation skills for both technical and non-technical audiences

What you'll get

A competitive salary between £70,000 – £95,000 – dependent on capability

As well as your base salary, you will receive a company car or allowance, a bonus of up to 20% of your salary for stretch performance and a competitive contributory pension scheme where we will double match your contribution to a maximum company contribution of 12%. You will also have access to a number of flexible benefits such as a share incentive plan, a salary sacrifice technology scheme, support via the employee assistance line and matched charity giving to name a few.

More Information

The closing date for this vacancy is 28th January. However, we encourage candidates to submit their applications as early as possible and not to wait until the published closing date. National Grid’s recruitment periods can and may vary. We reserve the right to remove this advert or close it to further applications at any point during the recruitment process.

DE & I statement

At National Grid, we work towards the highest standards in everything we do, including how we support, value and develop our people. Our aim is to encourage and support employees to thrive and be the best they can be. We celebrate the difference people can bring into our organisation, and welcome and encourage applicants with diverse experiences and backgrounds, and offer flexible and tailored support, at home and in the office.
Our goal is to drive, develop and operate our business in a way that results in a more inclusive culture. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, the innovation from diverse teams & perspectives and business need. We are committed to building a workforce so we can represent the communities we serve and have a working environment in which each individual feels valued, respected, fairly treated, and able to reach their full potential.

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