Head of Cloud Services

North East Jobs; England; On-site; GBP 76,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading public sector organization is seeking a Head of Cloud Services to oversee cloud service development and implementation. This newly created role involves strategic leadership in cloud technology and architecture, ensuring adherence to enterprise standards while driving innovation and performance within the team. The successful candidate will have significant experience leading technical teams and a deep understanding of cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity technologies.

Qualifications

• Experience in leading digital cloud services and continuous improvement.
• Strong understanding of technical concepts and architectural frameworks.
• Communication skills to mediate between technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership in the design and implementation of cloud services.
• Drive the cloud strategy and support digital transformation projects.
• Manage supplier relationships and ensure compliance with service levels.

Skills

Communication

Strategy

Governance and assurance

Information Security

Education

Strong experience in leading technical teams

In-depth understanding of cloud computing

Job description

Head of Cloud Services

Contract type: Permanent

Location: Newcastle with occasional travel to the NAO's office in London, Victoria.

Salary: Newcastle c£76,000 per annum plus civil service pension scheme. Higher ranges may be available for exceptional candidates.

Hours: Flexible working and part time hours will be considered.

Closing date for applications is 23:59pm on Tuesday 24th June 2025

Nationality Requirement:

• UK Nationals
• Nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• Nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with (or eligible for) status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)

Please note, we are not able to sponsor work visas or accept temporary visas as we are looking to hire on a permanent basis. Please contact the HR Service desk ([e-mail]) should you have any questions on your nationality eligibility.

Introduction:

Head of Cloud Services (HoCS) is a newly created role within the NAO’s Digital Services (DS) function. With responsibility for the development and continual improvement of NAO cloud service composition and provision. They will also lead the technical architectural practice and wider strategic cloud implementations, providing expertise and leadership in the definition, design, implementation, adoption and adherence to enterprise architecture strategies and standards. With the NAO having completed its journey to cloud provision for all services, this role will ensure that cloud capabilities remain current, secure and deliver value to the organisation.

The post holder will produce strategic roadmaps for NAO cloud services, own responsibility for architectural designs / exit & future migration strategies, resource competency models for cloud services and will oversee technical workstreams for change projects relating to the NAO’s Azure, Information Security, M365, messaging & connectivity technology platforms. They will also oversee the NAO’s technical architectural standards, principles, policies, artefacts and processes.

This role reports into the Head of Audit Technology.

The team comprises at least two senior technical architects [as direct reports] and will involve matrix management of a range of architects, engineers, analysts, and external supply teams.

This role requires regular attendance to the office in Newcastle, and occasional attendance in the NAO’s office in Victoria, London.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities of the role:

Function Responsibilities:

Cloud Service Development

• The principal responsibility of the HoCS is to provide expertise and leadership in the definition, design and implementation of cloud services on the NAO’s strategic cloud platforms.
• Within this, they will have responsibility for the ongoing development of technologies and services used within the NAO’s cloud and related network/infrastructure context, including ensuring that they remain effective, secure, integrated, legacy-free, appropriate for the NAO and consistent with the NAO Digital Plan and associated architectural principles.
• The role will support business change – to enable NAO service owners to realise opportunities and digital transformation strategies, and it will involve leading technical teams to deliver solutions.
• They will have responsibility for the strategic direction and platform development of NAO cloud services (spanning cloud, information security, connectivity & messaging). This will include production of technology roadmaps, architectural design diagrams, transformation or migration strategies, backup / recovery & exit strategies for cloud services. Including current and future resourcing and capability models for technical teams involved in the development or support of NAO cloud services.
• Devising and implementing an evolving Cloud Strategy for the NAO, considering the cloud element of every internal digital change programme. Leading the cloud element of NAO digital projects that help the organisation to; review existing services, determine cloud compatibility, perform cost / benefit analysis, and build application migration and modernisation roadmaps.
• They will oversee and approve changes to high and low level technical designs of systems and services, justifying and communicating overall solutions and designs to review boards and senior stakeholders
• They will determine the right environments for service provision, ensuring accessibility, availability, scalability, integration, security, capacity & compute management, monitoring & reporting, operational effectiveness, and overall cloud service integrity and appropriateness.
• Overseeing the work of other NAO technical architects to ensure that the NAO’s ongoing digital transformation remains at the forefront of public sector digital development.

Cybersecurity Reference Architecture & Technology

• They will have responsibility for determining and implementing [in conjunction with NAO Information Security team] the Information Security operations technology and services for the NAO.
• Including designing, configuring, implementing and maintaining the architecture for:
• Microsoft Defender (XDR, Cloud & Cloud Apps, Copilot & Experts for XDR)
• Microsoft Unified Endpoint Management (EDR, Intune, Config Manager, vulnerability management)
• Microsoft Entra (including PIM and ID Protection) & Conditional Access
• Microsoft Purview & all DLP policies
• Microsoft Azure (IaaS, PaaS, Firewall, Backup & PAWs)
• Cloud monitoring, alerting & SIEM solutions (including Sentinel)

Enterprise Architecture Practice

• They will also have responsibility for leading adoption and adherence to all enterprise architectural strategies, principles, standards and policies.
• They will be the technical lead on the NAO’s Digital Design Authority and Architecture Review Board to oversee the development and implementation of robust principles and practices, and their application to services

General

• They will develop, communicate, and execute a clear vision for NAO cloud service technology roadmaps. They will produce, maintain, and publish relevant technology roadmaps, architectural diagrams, high/low level service design diagrams for the NAO’s cloud technologies.
• They will assure all NAO cloud services, across sets of services, using tooling, such as standards, frameworks, principles, and guardrails to effectively govern delivery
• They will oversee and direct supplier and contract management of third-party suppliers. Fostering a collaborative approach, ensuring suppliers deliver against contractual obligations whilst adopting a continuous improvement ethos. This includes devising supplier KPIs/SLAs, managing, tracking, and reporting on supplier performance.
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and customer-centricity within the DS Cloud Services team.
• Thought Leadership & Knowledge Management. Helping to interpret and exploit the flood of incoming information regarding new cloud technologies such as the Force.com, AWS, Cisco, ServiceNow, Sentinel, Power & Azure platforms, related innovative platform resident applications, updating development methodologies, libraries, tools, etc. to ensure that NAO Digital Services remain fast followers of new technology.

Team Responsibilities:

• Ensure all DS Cloud Services team members have clear roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities. Agreeing annual objectives and goals, ensuring team level objectives are met and that there is cohesive and joined up working between and across suppliers and NAO teams.
• Manage team performance, ensuring alignment with NAO and DS values. Implement and manage personal development plans to foster growth and potential.
• People management including training, coaching, development, recruiting, workload management and performance coaching.
• Team knowledge share and guidance provided to address any single points of failure/success. Effective succession planning and capacity / capability management to ensured continued service delivery and continuous improvement for DS Cloud Services.
• Work planning and forecasting across the team to ensure operational activities are fully resourced and funded as the organisation requires.
• Working as part of the Digital Services Management Team to ensure overall operational effectiveness, security and integrity of all Digital Services service provision.

Supplier & Commercial Management:

• Establish strategic partnerships with key business partners, managing performance and vendor relationships.
• Ensuring that appropriate statement of works are produced ahead of engagement with delivery partners, negotiating outcomes, delivery timelines and cost thresholds, driving delivery within agreed timelines and quality thresholds
• Ensure suppliers deliver in line with commercial obligations and service levels. Manage and report contract performance including breaches and necessary responses, such as milestone/performance payments or service credits (depending on contract)
• Ensure that supplier service levels remain relevant to the NAO, manage all contract documentation and correspondence, overseeing all contract variations, extensions, closures etc.

Tools & Technology:

• Enable the team to work more proactively rather than reactively. Maintaining current and future tooling roadmaps for DS Cloud Services, through proactive horizon scanning and active management of tooling legacy statuses and related enterprise debt
• Ensuring that cloud technologies used by the NAO are available as required, have the appropriate level of access & licensing, incorporate the necessary level of security, have sufficient infrastructure [or bandwidth] capacity to remain operational. Monitoring forward forecasts of staffing numbers from NAO HR to ensure that corporate licensing remains adequate and appropriate.
• Monitor IT infrastructure and application metrics relating to performance, capacity, utilisation, and availability. Reporting on performance against agreed targets. Responding ahead of potential issue trigger points
• Working closely with the DS Portfolio Manager, Delivery managers and technical team leads ensuring a smooth and successful transition of change projects, projects, and CI into operational running & support.

Skills required

The skill sets listed also include the corresponding skill level (awareness, working, practitioner, expert):

• Communicating between the technical and non-technical: You can mediate between people and mend relationships, communicating with stakeholders at all levels. You can identify the needs of business and technical stakeholders and effectively manage stakeholder expectations. (Skill level: Expert)
• Strategy: You can define and challenge strategies, patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements. You can provide proactive advice and guidance for their definition across the organisation. You can work within a strategic context and communicate how activities meet strategic goals. (Skill level: practitioner)
• Understanding the whole context: You can understand trends and practices within and outside the organisation and how these will impact your work. You look for deeper underlying problems and opportunities, anticipate problems before they occur and identify the impact of changes to policy. (Skill level: Practitioner)
• Governance and assurance: You can evolve and define governance, taking responsibility for working with and supporting other staff in wider governance. You can assure services across sets of services and use tools such as standards, guardrails and principles to effectively govern delivery. (Skill level: Practitioner)
• Making and guiding decisions: You can make decisions characterised by high levels of risk, impact and complexity. You build consensus between organisations (private or public) or highly independent and diverse stakeholders. (Skill level: Expert)
• Commercial Management: You can take responsibility for complex relationships with contracted suppliers. You can identify appropriate contractual frameworks and suppliers, negotiate with contracted suppliers and get good value out of contracts. (Skill level: Practitioner)
• Systems Design: You can design systems characterised by high levels of risk impact, and business or technical complexity. You can select appropriate design, methods and tools, and ensure they are applied effectively. You can review the system designs of others to ensure the selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology (Skill level: Expert)
• Information Security: You can demonstrate in-depth knowledge of information security. You can design, quality review and quality assure solutions and services with security controls embedded, specifically engineered with mitigation of security threats as a core feature (Skill level: Expert)
• Systems integration: You can define the integration build, coordinate build activities across systems and understand how to undertake and support integration testing activities. (Skill level: Practitioner)
• Development Process Optimisation: You can set the strategy and manage resource allocation for solution development programmes. You can work with client functions to establish business requirements and identify, propose, initiate and lead these programmes. (Skill level: Expert)
• Planning: You can understand the environment and prioritise the most important or high value tasks, using data to inform planning and provide delivery confidence. You can manage complex internal and external dependencies, remove blockers or impediments that affect plans and can develop a plan for difficult situations. You can ensure that teams plan appropriately for their capacity. (Skill level: Practitioner)
• Maintaining delivery momentum: You can facilitate the delivery flow of a team, managing the pace and tempo. You can actively address internal and external risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team. (Skill level: Practitioner)
• Problem management: You can ensure that the right actions are taken to investigate, resolve and anticipate problems to defend against them at the right time. You understand how the problem fits into the large picture and co-ordinate the team to investigate problems. (Skill level: Practitioner)

Educational requirements

Experience

• Leading Digital Cloud Services: Strong experience of leading technical teams and suppliers to maintain, sustain, secure, and support an organisations digital cloud estate. Overseeing continuous improvement and change capabilities, ensuring a thorough knowledge of the service requirements and expectations alongside the commensurate resources, services, and tools necessary to meet that demand within a cloud service context.
• Leading continuous improvement & problem management: Strong experience of leading investigative work into problems and opportunities in existing processes for optimisation. Experience in managing and leading the collection of information and creation of recommendations for improvements
• Technology & Architectural: In depth understanding and strong experience of technical concepts, specifically in the areas of; cloud computing, integrated and secure cloud service provision, data analytics, enterprise architecture and delivery management / agile / Azure DevOps capabilities. Strong awareness of digital standards, methods, principles, tools and applications with a proven ability to make the correct choice from alternatives supported by a strong awareness of the IT industry and government digital trends and developments.
• Technology landscape: Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the technologies and technical concepts required and how these fit in to the wider technical landscape both internally and externally. A good awareness of:
  • All Microsoft tools, operating systems, and platforms. In particular Azure, also encompassing messaging and cybersecurity architectures.
  • ServiceNow / Salesforce / AWS architecture, systems, integrations, and wider ecosystems
  • Cisco networking technologies and connectivity architectures
  • Virtualisation, compute power, storage, backup & recovery and networking architectures
  • Monitoring, alerting, packaging, and exposure management tools.
  • Experience of infrastructure management and IT automation within a cloud-based environment.