Head of Cloud and DevOps

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation.

Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.

Canada Life UK is transforming to create a more customer-focused business by providing our customers with expertise on financial and tax planning, offering home finance and annuities propositions, and providing collective fund solutions to third party customers.
Job Summary

The Head of Cloud and DevOps is accountable for the successful adoption and embedding of Cloud and DevOps within CLUK, aligned to our UK Cloud Strategy. This will mean shaping and building a new team to support CLUK on this journey.

The Head of Cloud and DevOps will report directly into the UK CIO as part of the CLL UK IT Senior Leadership team, working across IT, Change and other business services and functions to support the adoption of cloud.

This is an opportunity to be part of a new team, supporting the Cloud Programme Director, UK CIO and broader European Technology team on the delivery of our transformation goals.

The individual will be expected to have in depth experience of developing, maturing and operationally driving a Cloud Centre of Excellence function with experience of running Cloud operations, and DevOps functions within a cloud operating model

Specific goals are:

• Define and own the cloud and DevOps operating model on behalf of CLUK, working in partnership with both our UK teams and European counterparts to develop a model that maximises the benefit of our investments in cloud.
• Define, build and lead the Cloud and DevOps Team based on this operating model
• Manage relationships with Cloud Services Providers and Managed Service Providers to ensure that Canada Life's cloud environments continue to meet the needs of our customers and business
• Develop best practices, principles, policies, patterns, standards and guidelines to support safe but rapid adoption of cloud and DevOps techniques by Canada Life's development and project teams.
• Ensure the designs and implementation of workloads deployed within the cloud are fit for purpose and appropriately balance performance, availability, security and cost.
• Ensure the risks (including security, financial and other operational risks) associated with Cloud, DevOps and our applications' use of these capabilities are managed appropriately and in alignment with Canada Life's IT risk framework to reduce the overall risk to our business when compared with a well-managed traditional hosting and software delivery processes. Ensure the controls that ensure our risks remain in tolerance are automated to the maximum extent possible.
• Maintain a roadmap for development of our cloud platform, DevOps capability, security and risk controls in order to ensure we continue to measurably improve software delivery performance while also staying ahead of emerging threats and risks
• Ensure we manage the costs of our use of cloud in order to minimise the costs of hosting our applications while maintaining the levels of performance and availability required in a modern digital business.
• Drive automation across all aspects of our use of cloud. View any manual ticket/task completed as an opportunity to automate.
• Provide thought leadership and support to the European Office of the CIO and European CCoE community
• Drive the adoption of cloud & DevOps by engaging with development teams, projects and the wider organisation to maximise the value of cloud.
• Develop a migration and adoption process that allows new adoption of cloud to proceed quickly, efficiently and safely.
• Coach and develop both your own direct reports and members of the broader CLUK team in pursuit of successfully achieving the above.
• Support board and regulatory engagement as required.

What you'll do

• Team Management & Development - Define, build and lead a high performing Cloud and DevOps Team. Driving great team performance aligned to the European and UK strategies and goals.
• Business / Stakeholder Engagement. - Manage relationships with Cloud Services Providers and Managed Service Providers. Working in partnership with both our UK teams and European counterparts to develop an operating model that maximises the benefit of our investments in cloud.
• Operational / Governance oversight - Develop best practices, principles, policies, patterns, standards and guidelines to support safe but rapid adoption of cloud and DevOps techniques by Canada Life's development and project teams. Ensure costs are effectively managed to minimise the costs of hosting our applications while maintaining the levels of performance and availability required in a modern digital business.
• Strategy Development / Cloud Adoption Advocacy - Drive the adoption of cloud & DevOps by engaging with development teams, projects and the wider organisation to maximise the value of cloud.
• CCoE and OCIO engagement - Provide thought leadership and support to the European Office of the CIO and European CCoE community
• Operational and Financial Planning / Management - Ensure the designs and implementation of workloads deployed within the cloud are fit for purpose and appropriately balance performance, availability, security and cost.
• Portfolio / Change support / engagement - work with colleagues across the organisation to Develop a migration and adoption process that allows new adoption of cloud to proceed quickly, efficiently and safely.
• ITSLT support and engagement

Skills/Knowledge/Experience

• Experience of supporting the successful adoption of cloud in large scale cloud programmes within financial services organisations.
• Strong understanding of the value proposition of cloud
• Strong knowledge of both cloud technology and DevOps tools and techniques
• Demonstrable experience relevant to the development and effective delivery of cloud support teams
• Extensive experience in design and deployment of IT operating models and organisational change
• Strong commercial acumen and ability to deliver complex IT and business change transformation with a focus on continual innovation and cost optimisation
• Significant experience in Audit, Regulatory, Risk and Compliance engagements in a highly regulated industry. Understand Regulatory expectations across jurisdictions, the challenges of multi-region/ global FS institutions and implications for data and technology
• People Management - Extensive leadership and management skills, ability to influence others through strong collaboration while maintaining effective relationships
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with ability to negotiate and resolve conflicting priorities and able to work effectively at all levels
• Self-directed, proactive, works on own initiative with a best practice approach
• Excellent facilitation skills, high energy and resilience with a focus on relationship management and driving successful outcomes
• Strong analytical and critical thinking skills, has the ability to simplify and resolve complex human and technology problems
• Degree level qualification in computer science or equivalent useful but not required
• Significant experience in technology leadership roles
• Significant experience of delivering organisational change
• Significant experience of working with and in organisations using devops tools and techniques including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, automated incident response, infrastructure automation, etc. Experience of SRE a bonus
• Significant experience of working hands on with major cloud platforms, e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP
• Experience of overseeing 24x7 operations
• Experience of automated risk and security controls.
• Experience of cloud economics and financial management
• Experience of presenting to and interacting with executive level roles
• Experience of supplier management
• Experience of managing multiple change initiatives concurrently.
• Exceptional project management and organization skills with ability to manage across several initiatives

What you'll like about working here
As a Canada Life UK colleague, you'll receive a competitive salary and comprehensive reward package including income protection, private medical insurance and life assurance, along with a generous pension and bonus scheme. You'll also receive the support you need with your personal and professional development.

Diversity and inclusion
Canada Life is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Our role as an employer of choice is to provide the right environment for talented people to do their best work, by respecting, understanding and valuing individual differences