Head of Applications & Service Delivery Full Time

Internetwork Expert

Head of Applications & Service Delivery

Reporting to the COO, the Head of Applications & Service Delivery will own and manage Seraphine’s application landscape, spanning the entire business from design and sourcing through supply chain. Some of those systems are maintained inhouse while others are SaaS.

As the Head of Applications & Service Delivery, you will be an experienced manager of high performing teams, bringing strong service management capabilities to build capability within the IT team, ensuring that our third party vendors are managed and delivering to SLAs.

This role is a key enabler in allowing Seraphine to keeping our systems running smoothly, and you will be involved in a variety of ongoing areas ranging from systems improvements/changes to driving continuous improvement initiatives. You will ensure great collaboration with all teams for optimal project delivery as well as consistent BAU management of production systems.

You will play a pivotal part in safeguarding the Seraphine’s digital assets, systems, and data from cyber threats and ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations.

This role will provide you with the opportunity to drive your business understanding and technical skillset forward, while taking advantage of being part of a small team which can move at pace.

About You:

The position requires a very hands-on individual with a strong technology foundation – ranging from the latest eCommerce platforms & tools to managing and operating high-availability, secure applications.

You appreciate that the lifecycle of a solution extends from idea to de-commission, not idea to initial go-live. You also understand the Ops aspect of DevOps, thinking about more than just the delivery of the application; you also appreciate the importance of logging, monitoring, observability, and issue diagnosis.

You’ll also be a driver of good practice and an excellent communicator with the ability to lead, engage and influence at all levels.

Experience of taking responsibility for a wide remit within IT will be essential and you will have a quick learning, pro-active, problem-solving approach to work.

Main Responsibilities

• Oversee day-to-day operation of the Seraphine applications landscape, ensuring world-class performance & availability.
• Collaborate with vendors and service providers to manage and maintain relationships, negotiate contracts, and stay updated with emerging technologies and product offerings.
• Manage the workload, assignment of tasks and responsibilities within the Applications and Infrastructure teams ensuring a focus on delivering great service.
• Foster a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration within the Applications and Infrastructure teams
• Understand the criticality of supported systems to a level where the business impact of a malfunction can be interrogated and assessed, leading to the appropriate level of action and priority being given to the resolution process.
• Own project management activities for assigned projects, ensuring that projects are managed through to delivery within agreed timescales and budgetary constraints.
• Manage major incidents relating to applications end to end, including customer communications and internal updates, ensuring timely resolution of issues, and minimizing impact on service availability.
• Provide a point of escalation for issues raised by team members, including both technical queries and general issues
• Ensure that new or changed services are adequately documented to facilitate their day-to-day support, and that new procedures are created where required.
• Provide and maintain processes and knowledge documents to allow the team to support a breadth of applications
• As a line manager, provide support and guidance for your direct reports to help them grow and develop in their roles.
• Manage service level agreements (SLAs) and ensure service delivery meets or exceeds performance targets.
• Implement and maintain monitoring and alerting systems to proactively identify and address potential issues.
• Implement comprehensive disaster recovery strategies and business continuity plans
• Establish and maintain a robust cybersecurity framework to protect sensitive data and system integrity, adhering to industry standards and regulatory compliance.

What we stand for

We are the leading scale player in a specialist market – maternity and nursing wear – and we have 18 years of experience behind us doing this and nothing but this.

But what we do at Seraphine is more than just fashion and clothes. We help women feel absolutely confident in their changing bodies and enable them to continue to express the choice and style they had prior to pregnancy, during pregnancy, whilst providing them with product innovations that make motherhood a breeze.

What we’re delivering

We are highly international (more than 2/3 of our sales are from markets outside of the UK) and highly digital – we were an early embracer of eCommerce and the channel now represents 90% of our revenue. We’re also a digital marketing machine: acquiring customers profitably from first order, with more than half returning for a second order during the current pregnancy and more and more coming back to us again when the family grows further. This all contributes to market leading profit and product margins and our double-digit growth rates across the world put the rest to shame.

• Good knowledge of technical architecture and the functionality of applications used to support the business.
• Experience of working in a dynamic environment often with shifting priorities
• Solid understanding of IT service management (ITSM) frameworks and processes, such as ITIL.
• Experience of managing relationships with third party service providers
• A strategic thinker, able to anticipate issues and to drive solutions and accountability.
• Strong leadership and team management skills – an ability to engage, develop and motivate, alongside being able to identify and develop talent
• Excellent time management skills, the ability to prioritise projects and process multiple tasks.
• Ability to communicate in an effective and concise manner so that complex logistic information is translated into relevant and clear business terms.
• Understand the security and fraud threats that affect an eCommerce business and any regulatory requirements that the business must follow.
• Experience with information, data and cybersecurity best practices (ideally ISO27001 or Cyber Essentials Plus), technologies, standards and controls, including ongoing management and prevention is a plus

• Life Assurance
• Income Protection
• Health Cash Plan
• Holiday entitlement – 25 days excluding bank holidays (with one additional day per year of service)
• Birthday day off
• Discretionary Company Bonus Scheme
• Enhanced Maternity/Paternity Scheme
• Family friendly policies
• Staff discount policy (50%)

Salary Exchange Benefits:

• Pension Scheme – 5% employee and 3% employer contribution
• Technology
• Will Writing
• Holiday Exchange
• Workplace Nursery
• Gym Benefit
• Cycle 2 Work

Discount Benefits:

• Gadget Insurance
• Cycle Insurance
• Cancer Screening
• Pet Insurance
• Lottie – Care Home Discount
• Health & Wellbeing Videos