The Football Association [The FA] is the not-for-profit governing body of football in England. It is responsible for promoting and developing every level of the game, from grassroots through to the professional game, and generates significant revenue to support investment into English football each year.

The FA oversees England international teams across men's, women's, youth and disability football, as well as running the National League System and FA Competitions including the Emirates FA Cup, Barclays FA Women's Super League, FA Women's Championship, and Vitality Women's FA Cup, and the world-class facilities of Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park, all with a purpose to Unite the Game and Inspire the Nation.

Digital Technology

HAVE THE DIGITAL WORLD AT YOUR FEET

Technology is key to the FA's transformation. From supporting grassroots via our day-to-day digital presence, to using data-led insights to drive the game - to developing future focused platforms for professional football - our Digital Technology team is central to our future.

Whilst investment in technology to make the experience of all participants relevant and easy, is already at the heart of how we can serve the game, we are looking to invest even further and deliver in a more iterative way, forming product lines and fully moving towards an Agile, Product Management framework.

By 2024, we will upgrade and simplify our core football administration system (moving from Whole Game System to Platform for Football) and provide enhanced capability to England teams.

Our product lines cover all those that RUN, PLAY, LEARN as well as our responsibility to REGULATE, WIN and leverage DATA whilst also ensuring sufficient focus on the CORE BUSINESS online and PLATFORMS that support each product and service across the organisation.

Join us in helping to DECIDE THE GAME and HAVE THE DIGITAL WORLD AT YOUR FEET.

The Role and Key Accountabilities

Management of the technology platform, ensuring it is fit for purpose to deliver against project requirements for both the wider business and technology teams.

• Collaborate with the Head of Platform to build an effective roadmap that will develop the maturity of the FA's Azure and on-premise platforms, through budget planning and implementation of fit for purpose solutions and processes.
• Ensure the platform engineering team provide technical design and build services across the complete spectrum of the FA project portfolio:
  • Provide input into Solution Architecture Documents to ensure all platform components are designed to agreed standards.
  • Provide resource to build all technology platform components, utilising automation to achieve this where possible.
  • Ensure that all projects have defined platform standards and are implemented as expected.
  • Validate that any third parties providing solutions or services meet a minimum set of defined platform standards.
  • Work with the InfoSec Manager to ensure all platform services meet security standards.
• Ensure the effective utilisation of DevOps technologies throughout the FA delivery function.
  • Ensure DevOps tools and processes are in place and effective throughout the development lifecycle
  • Ensure automated quality assurance testing and deployment through the FA environments into production.
  • Build, communicate and utilise effective standards for DevOps processes
  • Ensure that managed service teams are correctly resourced for the FA product portfolio.
  • Provide effective metrics for the measurement of the success of DevOps process within the FA.
  • Be an evangelist for the use of DevOps through communication, training and awareness sessions.
• Manage and control the Azure platform budget to ensure effective utilisation of resources.
• Ensure regular and documented meetings are held with the delivery partner to measure delivery performance
• Attend the Architecture Review Board, to ensure all platform engineering requirements are provided in potential new solutions

• Execute additional tasks as required in order to meet FA Group changing priorities.
• Comply with all company policies and procedures to ensure the highest standards of health, safety and wellbeing can be maintained.

What we are looking for

Essential

• Experience in a Platform Engineering Management role
• Experience with managing third party service providers and business stakeholders.
• In depth knowledge of the cloud marketplace and solutions
• Good project and change management skills
• Good technology experience and strong info sec technical background in both traditional and cloud (Azure preference) environments.
• Experience with quality improvement processes to drive efficiency.
• Effective presentation skills (written and verbal)

Desirable

• Technology experience within Football or other sporting associations or a working knowledge of sports administration systems
• Experience working in a matrix structure/multiple client groups

What we can offer you

• An exciting and challenging role within a changing, dynamic and world-renowned sports organisation.
• Attractive benefits and a competitive salary.

Please be aware that unless you are on a homebased contract, your contract with The FA will specify a fixed location of either Wembley Stadium, St. George's Park or our Processing Centre.

We currently work within a hybrid working model whereby the expectation is to work from your contractual location for part of the week, and as and when required by the team. The remaining days can be worked remotely. We will continue to monitor this model and it may be adjusted in future if deemed necessary.

The Football Association Group promotes inclusion and diversity, and welcomes applications from everyone. If you have any particular requirements in respect of the recruitment or interview process please mention this in your application.

Contact Name: The Football Association
Reference: TJ/9692/WNSL0460_1655457647
Job ID: 3104714