Job Vacancy Platform Infrastructure Lead

Our Purpose

Working in Partnership for a happier world - our shared Purpose that guides us in everything we do and inspires 3 important principles; happier people, happier business, happier world. The John Lewis Partnership is a truly unique business, one that seeks to make a positive difference to the lives of everyone.

At a glance

• Working pattern  - This is a hybrid working role, therefore your time will primarily be split between working from home and the Bracknell Head Office, There will be occasional travel to our London office

• The Managed Infrastructure team aims to spend 1 to 2 days a week in the office to connect, specifically Tuesday, and on a more ad-hoc basis to attend key meetings.

• Salary range - The salary range for this role is set at £57,600 - £92,400

• Contract type - 1 Permanent role and 1 Secondment role (23 months) 

Here at the John Lewis Partnership we have a bold and innovative IT team. We support our business by providing industry leading technology solutions that cater for our customer needs whenever and wherever they are, continually promoting innovation, transforming our infrastructure and delivering new and unique ways of shopping. Our mission is to delight customers at every opportunity and to maintain our reputation as the best retailer in the country.

We are embarking on an exciting journey to modernise our technology and ways of working, which together deliver the pace and agility that we will harness to meet the diverse needs and value expectations of our customers. 

We have a fantastic and exciting opportunity within our IT team to join us as a Platform Infrastructure Lead, to advance several key Infrastructure towers including private, hybrid, and public cloud, hosting and automation solutions. We are seeking an individual with significant experience, someone who is motivated, innovative, and committed to lead technology towers and to deliver secure, robust, stable and performant future ready infrastructure. You will have demonstrable experience in designing, implementing, and managing innovative, cost efficient solutions, modernising infrastructure services to the public cloud (predominantly Google Cloud Platform), simplifying and rationalising existing technologies, whilst maintaining Operational Excellence.

If you're enthusiastic about data centre infrastructure, and cloud technologies, if you thrive and perform in a time sensitive, high-demand environment, and if you take satisfaction in delivering results through others, then we want to hear from you!

What you'll be doing

As a senior member, you will be working as part of a large team covering a spectrum of technologies in a modern hybrid enterprise environment where interdependencies make up a proficient infrastructure capability. 

You will drive and be accountable for the outcomes the business requires in relation to your services. This means that you will be working effectively with Partners, vendors, and our strategic third party service providers to ensure effective delivery of the service, and strategy, whilst managing operational risks throughout.

Your wealth of expertise will be instrumental in running agile product teams and driving forward the technology roadmap. Additionally, you will be expected to manage and support business-critical or escalated issues, providing effective solutions. 

In the event of a major incident, you will act as the technical authority, communicating effectively with all stakeholders, coordinating the technical response, and ensuring clear and concise updates are provided throughout the resolution process. You will participate in post incident reviews, owning actions within your tower.

This role demands effective communication and coordination abilities. You will need to build positive working relationships within cross-functional teams, ensuring everyone is aligned and informed, whilst also maintaining clear and productive communication with external vendors.

As the Platform Infrastructure Lead you will:

• Develop working relationships with key business stakeholders and build understanding of the commercial, technical, and operational landscape and business strategy

• As a Platform Infrastructure Lead you will have responsibility for technology towers and will strongly influence how the platform evolves to meet business needs. You will work with a diverse range of technical and non-technical stakeholders which will require comprehensive communication skills.

• Be the product owner for your key technology towers, both on-premise and cloud

• As Product Owner, define the vision for the product backlog and prioritise product group workloads to deliver business and technical requirements

• Work collaboratively with with internal agile engineering teams

• Develop the product groups into high performing agile engineering teams

• Deliver value for John Lewis Partnership by ensuring quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness from all infrastructure management contracts

• Manage suppliers and vendors to ensure Infrastructure Platforms remain secure, stable, robust and performant by delivering and maintaining end to end Operational Excellence

• Ensure that the services provided by vendors and managed service suppliers deliver against agreed SLAs, key metrics, and statements of work

• Use your knowledge and experience of infrastructure platform services and an understanding of its consumption by the business, to develop a forecast of demand for the service and (by extension) the vendor's services

• Manage third party provision of infrastructure services and maintain operational integrity

• Work with Architecture to ensure deliverables are aligned with the business and technical strategy, producing business cases to deliver change and innovation, and translate architectural designs into operations.

• Ensure full life cycle management is planned, managed and delivered across the infrastructure estate; with published and managed roadmaps, aligned to strategy

• Be the technical SME and authoritative point of escalation for your technology towers

• Identify and deliver cost efficiencies across all commercial contracts in scope of your technologies, establishing value for the Partnership

• Manage utilisation against entitlement of commercial products, ensure robust Capacity Management process and reporting are in place.

• You will also have key input into deriving efficiency in cost management and consumption, working alongside FinOps when required

• You will shape and implement policy alongside Security Operations.

• You will work closely with the other Infrastructure areas and interface with the established Product & Platform teams to embed capability within areas.

 Essential Skills you'll need 

• Deep technical expertise and experience in key technologies as defined below including experience of cloud, infrastructure and microservice architecture.

• Proven history of developing IT Delivery in a lean and agile environment through supporting and motivating technical teams to deliver growth.

• Demonstrable experience in leading managed services / high-value third-party contracts in a complex enterprise IT environment.

• Comprehensive knowledge of agile methodologies & DevSecOps frameworks.

• Effective communication skills that go beyond “tech talk” - the ability to translate complex IT matters to those without an IT background.

• A credible and established expert with good commercial and operational acumen, who is able to demonstrate extensive knowledge and hands-on experience in building positive relationships, including third parties.

• A comprehensive knowledge of modern Hosted Service principles, along with proven experience of how these technologies support an enterprise business.

• Proven experience of managing high value third party contracts delivered predominantly offshore, and having budgetary management skills, understanding of contract penalties and experience with service renewals and supporting processes

• The ability to work in a time-sensitive situation in a busy environment, with effective problem-solving skills, an analytical mind and demonstrate a high attention to detail

Deep technical expertise, skills, and experience in some or all of the following areas: ?

Understands the landscape and comprehend the challenges of Data Centres, Google Cloud Platform, and Hybrid Cloud

Infrastructure Automation - VMware Automation |Orchestration | Ansible | Terraform

DevOps tools - e.g CI/CD (Jenkins, Gitlab) | Docker | Nexus | Chocolatey

Cloud infrastructures and the concept of Software Defined Data Centres

Google Cloud - GCE/GKE

A good understanding of Agile and DevOps practices and methodologies. (Kanban, Scrum, Scrumban, CI/CD)

Operating Systems - AIX | Wintel | Linux (Red Hat; SUSE; Oracle)

Data Centre Hosting - Virtualisation (VMware | GCVE) | IBM Power Series | IBM Mainframe

Storage and Backup technologies on-prem and in Cloud

Active Directory | Identity and Access Management | PAM | MFA | Data Security | SSO

Database - MS SQL | PostgreSQL | IBM DB2 | Oracle

Middleware Technologies - MQ | WAS | WebLogic | IIS | Java | Tomcat | Adobe | Apache | HTTP Server

Certificate Management | PKI | HSM | KMS | Database Security

Tooling - BMC TSOM | Zabbix | IBM IWS | BMC Discovery | Flexera

Desirable Skills

• Experience working with a hybrid cloud presentation comprising large elements of on-premise and public cloud workloads.

• FinOps experience: Budgeting/Forecasting/Cost Optimisation with a PxQ billing model.

• Experience in the retail sector, both physical and or online.

Next Steps: 

• The application form consists of a CV upload, followed by application questions. Please save the application questions to a Google docs before entering on Workday. 

• You'll be asked about any adjustments you might need to support the recruitment process. Let us know, and we'll be sure to discuss it with you. 

• Please note: we sometimes close vacancies early in the event of a large response, so we recommend you apply as early as possible. 

Benefits of the Partnership and the role 

• Hybrid Working. 

• Full - time working holiday entitlement 25 days holiday, plus public and bank holidays (this is prorated for part time hours).

• Excellent work life balance, including focus on well being and flexible working and our marketing leading equal parenthood leave Policy

• Defined Contribution pension scheme where your contributions will be matched by the Partnership (up to 8% of pay) and, after three years' service, you'll receive an additional Partnership contribution of 4% of pay, regardless of whether you pay in or not

• You'll get Partnership discount in store and online once you complete your Earning Membership period. That's 25% off in John Lewis (12% off electrical products, some exclusions apply) and 20% in Waitrose (some exclusions apply) You'll also be able to nominate someone you live with to share your discount.

• Simple cycle to work support scheme

• We're really proud of our exclusive hotels based in some of Britain's most beautiful areas and once you've been with us for three months, you're welcome to explore them

• Health Care cover (level applicable)