Director of Applications | London | Hybrid | £Role SummaryThe client's Digital function exists to enable the client's global mission by ensuring our people have the platforms, applications and engineering capability to operate effectively at scale. Following a period of foundational delivery, including Cyber Essentials+ certification, a live SOC, Salesforce as our CRM platform, stabilisation of our Workday investment, and building our data warehouse foundations, Digital is moving into a phase focused on platform maturity, AI-enabled operations and engineering excellence.
The Director of Applications is a new, senior role accountable for the availability, configuration and ongoing evolution of the client's core business platforms: Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft 365 / Azure, together with the engineering practice, AI platform operations and platform-level roadmaps that underpin them. Reporting to the CTO, this role leads the Applications function, owns the platform Centre of Excellence, and translates business needs into delivered platform capability.
You will have deep expertise in SaaS platforms, modern engineering practice (CI/CD, source control, environment and release management, test automation) and the operational realities of running mission-critical systems globally, working closely with the CTO, Head of Digital Transformation & Performance, Enterprise Architect, Director of Security & Compliance, and platform leads.
Key ResponsibilitiesPlatform Leadership- Accountable for availability, configuration and management of the client's three strategic platforms: Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft 365 / Azure
- Own platform-level roadmaps enabling delivery of the Digital Roadmap, with the Digital Leadership Team and Platform Leads
- Establish and lead the platform Centre of Excellence and internal community across platform leads and developers
- Line management responsibility for the Build team
Engineering Practice- Own engineering practice: source control/repo governance (GitHub, Salesforce via Gearset), CI/CD, environment management, release management, test strategy/automation
- Define and enforce technical execution standards for releases, distinct from change control approval
- Define and lead engineering standards, architectural patterns and Infrastructure as Code
AI Platform Operations- Accountable for operational availability of internal AI platforms (Claude, Agentforce, AI assistants) and AI consumption cost/budget management
- Own AI usage monitoring: drift, hallucination and misuse pattern detection, with the Director of Security & Compliance
- Provide the operational foundation for Agentic AI and Generative AI capability pillars
Capacity & Observability- Own scaling, rightsizing and optimisation of cloud and SaaS resources
- Own application monitoring, alerting and on-call response for in-scope platforms
- Lead cross-platform test strategy and quality standards
Cross-Functional Working- Translate business needs (Digital Roadmap) into platform-level delivery (Platform Roadmaps)
- Partner on identity, access, secret management and DevSecOps practices in CI/CD
- Partner with the Enterprise Architect on technical decisions and integration patterns
- Support the CTO with investment cases, vendor negotiation and executive reporting
Person Specification- Significant senior leadership experience running enterprise application functions globally
- Deep expertise in at least two of: Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft 365/Azure or AWS (configuration, integration, governance, licensing, support)
- Experience embedding CI/CD, source control governance, environment/release management, automated testing in a SaaS-heavy environment
- Track record building and running Centres of Excellence around major platforms
- Experience operationalising AI platforms and managing AI consumption cost is a strong advantage
- Strong understanding of how applications-layer decisions intersect with security, identity, data and architecture
- Experience managing technical leads and platform specialists, with a track record of developing them
- Comfortable operating at executive level on investment cases and roadmap trade-offs
- Pragmatic and delivery-oriented; able to defend decisions on engineering investment
- Open, progressive, bold and pragmatic - an optimistic changemaker aligned with the client's core beliefs
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