Head of IT

Summary:

This is the opportunity to take up the role of Head of Information Technology, a pivotal leadership role responsible for the strategic oversight and operational excellence of the entire IT estate.

As the business progresses through the current regulatory period, the role holder will play a central role in the transition from legacy infrastructure and applications to a modern, digitalised environment; without this leadership, the business risks technical debt and failure to meet regulatory performance commitments.

The scope includes ensuring the high availability of critical national infrastructure (CNI) systems and overseeing robust cyber security to protect vital assets. The role aligns technical execution with business strategy, ensuring that IT investment directly supports regulatory performance commitments and customer service excellence. By driving a culture of continuous improvement, the role ensures the IT estate remains a resilient, scalable asset that enables the wider organisation to achieve its long-term goals.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership: Develop and execute an IT roadmap that aligns with defined regulatory and business outcomes, focusing on cloud-first architecture and data-driven decision-making.
• Operations Management: Direct the end-to-end delivery of IT services (Infrastructure, Apps, Service Desk), ensuring 24/7 availability for both corporate and operational technology (OT) interfaces.
• Service Delivery: Delivery timely, effective and resilient end-to-end IT services across all business stakeholders, ensuring consistently high levels of end-user satisfaction.
• Cyber Security & Resilience: Accountable for the security posture of the estate, ensuring compliance with NIS Regulations and protecting critical water assets from evolving threats.
• Transformation Delivery: Lead the IT workstream for the company’s transformation programme, migrating legacy on-premise systems to SaaS and GCP environments, rationalising the application portfolio, resulting in reduced technical debt and improved data accessibility for staff.
• Financial Stewardship: Manage a multi-million pound OPEX and CAPEX budget, ensuring value for money and effective vendor management of key strategic partners.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Act as a trusted advisor to the Executive team, demystifying complex technology issues and reporting on pertinent metrics and measures related to system uptime and programme delivery.
• Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery: Develop, maintain, and regularly test comprehensive IT Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans, ensuring minimal disruption to CNI and business operations in the event of a major incident.
• Partner / Vendor Management: Establish and govern strategic relationships with key IT partners and vendors, negotiating contracts and SLAs to ensure optimal service delivery, value, and risk mitigation.
• IT Governance & Compliance: Define, implement, and monitor robust IT governance frameworks, ensuring compliance with all internal policies, external regulatory requirements (e.g.NIS, GDPR), and industry best practices.
• IT Architecture: Provide strategic direction and oversight for the enterprise IT architecture, ensuring all technical solutions are scalable, secure, cost-effective, and aligned with the long-term technology roadmap.

Essential Skills / Qualifications / Experience:

• Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Professional certifications: ITIL Master/Expert, PRINCE2 or Agile, and CISM/CISSP.
• Membership in a professional body (e.g. BCS) is desirable
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to map technical solutions to regulatory (OFWAT/DWI) requirements.
• Change Management: Proven ability to lead teams through significant cultural and technological shifts.
• Vendor Management: Expertise in managing large-scale MSPs and complex software licensing.
• Communication: Exceptional ability to translate "tech-speak" for
  non-technical stakeholders.
• Minimum 10 years of IT leadership experience, ideally within an asset intensive regulated utility or CNI environment.
• Extensive knowledge and experience of IT Service and Financial Management.
• Proven track record of delivering large-scale digital transformation.
• Deep experience in managing diverse estates comprising legacy hardware and complex application portfolios, alongside modern cloud stacks.
• Experience navigating the specific challenges of the UK Water industry (AMP cycles) is highly advantageous.

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We want to be the water company people want to be supplied by and want to work for.

We know the communities we serve are diverse. We recognise creativity comes from diversity not similarity. That’s why we are enthusiastic about creating inclusion across age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion and identity. You will experience our dedication to equal opportunities and fair treatment for all: through your recruitment, employment and career progression with South East Water.

Benefits package:

• Excellent Stakeholder pension scheme, up to 10% employer contribution.
• 5 weeks holiday plus bank holidays per annum, increasing to 6 weeks with length of service.
• Flexible annual leave policy to buy or sell holiday leave.
• Paid volunteering days.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Health cash plan.
• Life assurance.
• Wellbeing related benefits.

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What can you expect from your recruitment?

• To apply for this position, please submit your CV on our career’s website.
• It is necessary for you to have the legal right to work in the UK when you begin employment with South East Water.
• Additionally, as part of the employment offer, you will need to pass background, identity, and employment referencing checks.

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If this sounds like the opportunity you’ve been looking for, apply now!

South East Water kindly asks that recruitment agencies refrain from submitting CVs to our employees or associates without explicit invitation from our HR Resourcing team. CVs sent on a speculative basis will not be acknowledged and will not assume any responsibility for fees or commissions in the event that we hire a candidate who applied directly or subsequently introduced by an instructed agency.

Compensation package:

Starting from £120,000 depending on experience + £9,844 car allowance + senior management bonus