Application Technical Support Engineer Grade 11 (£44,019 £46,041)

Croydon is London’s second largest borough - a city within the city, full of brilliant and diverse people, businesses, and places.

As a council we’re going through tremendous change, with an ambitious transformation plan just published describing our plans to radically reshape and renew our organisation. We are essentially building a brand-new council – one that is focused on getting things right for its residents, while delivering very differently and within a sustainable financial envelope. 

About the Croydon Digital Service

Digital capability is critical to our renewal plans.

Established in 2019, the Croydon Digital Service (CDS) has embraced a GDS-style service to support the digital transformation of the council’s internal operations and online services for residents. We are a small and creative team that achieves a lot with a little whilst encouraging all team members to bring their whole selves and do their best work.

We are signatories of the Local Digital Declaration, committing us to delivering user-centred services that meet the Government Service Standard, and to following the Technology Code of Practice. We seek to collaborate, wherever possible, with other local authorities to share learnings, ideas, and solutions.

About the role

We are looking for an Application Operation Engineer/Application Technical Support Analyst to lead on the support and maintenance of service critical line of business applications, manage the technical environment in which such systems operate and implement service improvements through effective configuration of the application. Additionally, the role is responsible for the development of custom-built reports from our business systems to manage the production and analysis of statutory, performance and data quality reporting.

Reporting to the Adults and Education Digital Systems Product and Support Manager within the Croydon Digital Service, this role is a key part of how CDS supports Croydon’s critical business applications for these services, helping ensure council services are getting the most from these systems.

We are interested in motivated systems professionals to join the Digital Systems Team within CDS. The successful candidate will have operational knowledge of education management systems (EMS) like Access Group Synergy and Core Plus along with an understanding of the core statutory processes a Local Authority provides to support parents, providers, and schools.

Responsibilities:

• The role involves being a key point of contact between CDS and service users of business systems, so you are required to understand and troubleshoot applications and the technical environment in which such systems operate.
• Manage the technical relationship with the Council’s line of business suppliers.
• Implement appropriate security controls for users accessing the applications and its data.
• Develop and maintain queries, reports, and dashboards to support the production of statutory, financial, performance or data quality reporting from the applications.
• Participate in and support projects and other requests to upgrade or change the applications and the robust testing of these changes to ensure they are fit for purpose.
• Understand and follow service management best practise for application support and maintenance, adopting consistency of practise across the CDS support community.

Experience:

• Systems support experience working in ICT industry on at least one critical line of business system (ideally an Education Management System).
• A good track record in change management involving systems design & configuration, system and user testing, training, deployment, project, and service delivery.
• Experience of software release management.
• Experience of regularly delivering a range of ICT products including systems, programs, processes, procedures, data outputs, test plans and user guides.
• Some experience of system procurements and implementation, including public and private-sector partners and third parties.
• Some experience of bespoke development, providing interfaces with and reporting tools for packaged solutions.
• A good track record in delivering usable and supportable ICT solutions across various ICT platforms and services.
• Experience of working closely with key stakeholders, gaining credibility with that level of the organisation.
• Experience of using a ticketing system for managing support requests (e.g. Service Now).
• Experience of identifying data quality issues and implementing a data improvement plan in a key line of business system.
• Experience of supporting service users managing complex data and the security access controls of key line of business systems storing financial and sensitive data (and documents).
• Experience of delivering transformation and change in relation to systems and processes.
• Awareness of product management and agile/lean methods.

Croydon Council is transforming – come and be part of building a new council.