Do you want to work to make Power for Good?
We're the world's largest independent renewable energy company, guided by a simple yet powerful vision to create a future where everyone has access to affordable, zero carbon energy.
We know that achieving our ambitions would be impossible without our people. Because we're tackling some of the world's toughest problems, we need the very best people to help us. They're our most important asset so that's why we continually invest in them.
RES is a family with a diverse workforce, and we are dedicated to the personal and professional growth of our people, no matter what stage of their careers they're at. We can promise you rewarding work which makes a real impact, the chance to learn from inspiring colleagues from across a growing, global network and opportunities to grow personally and professionally.
Our competitive package offers a wide range of benefits and rewards.
The position
RES is establishing a Director of Platform Operations and Support to own how the company runs, supports and rationalises its global application and platform estate. Reporting to the Vice President of Global IT Operations, the role sets the strategy and the standard for technology operations across every RES business and every territory in which RES works.
The estate is broad. It spans the enterprise platforms every colleague depends on, the corporate systems that run finance, people and procurement, the commercial and project systems behind development and construction, and the operational systems that keep renewable assets producing. It reaches from Group functions through Development, Construction and Engineering to Services, across the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, France and the wider international footprint.
The role is the single point of accountability for all of it. It consolidates support that has historically been distributed across business functions and geographies into one global function, and holds it to a consistent standard of availability, security, cost and user experience.
The defining challenge is rationalisation. Much of the estate grew up locally, and it carries duplication, divergent ways of working and cost that RES no longer needs. This role owns the agenda to simplify it — deciding what is standardised, what is consolidated, what is retired and what is genuinely worth sustaining — and carrying those decisions with the business leaders affected by them.
This is a leadership role, not an oversight one. It sets direction and holds the standard, and it stays close enough to the operational detail to lead credibly through a major incident, a difficult supplier or a contested retirement.
Success is measured on the availability and stability of the estate, the cost of running it, the quality of what is accepted into service, and the removal of duplication across a portfolio that grew up locally.
It can be based in the United Kingdom, or Spain. Spanish is advantageous.
The role requires domestic and international travel of approximately 15–25%, principally between the United Kingdom, the United States and Spain.
Accountabilities
- Set and own the strategy for how RES operates, supports and rationalises its application and platform estate, and the multi-year roadmap that takes it to the target state.
- Own the global application rationalisation agenda: maintain the portfolio view of what RES runs and what it costs, and take the decisions to standardise, consolidate, retire or sustain — with Enterprise Architecture, and with the business leaders whose systems are affected.
- Chair the application portfolio governance forum, the body through which standardise, consolidate, retire and sustain decisions are taken, recorded and tracked through to completion.
- Hold single global accountability for every application and platform in service — across Group functions, Development, Construction, Engineering and Services, and across every region in which RES operates.
- Own the operation, support and service performance of the estate, ensuring availability, performance, resilience and data integrity against agreed service levels.
- Set the global operating standard for application support — one support model, one toolchain, one set of service commitments — and apply it consistently wherever RES works, in place of locally defined practice.
- Own the total cost of running the estate and the multi-year plan to reduce it, through consolidation, automation, licence and contract optimisation, and the retirement of low-value systems. Absorb new capability within a cost optimized approach.
- Hold the annual operating budget for the application and platform estate, set it through the planning cycle, and present investment and retirement cases to the V.P of IT Operations.
- Own the run-readiness gate: define the criteria a solution must meet before it enters service, and accept or reject handover from the application and data development functions against them.
- Own major incident management for the estate, including personal command of critical incidents, root-cause elimination through problem management, and transparent reporting of service performance to business and IT leadership.
- Define the service performance and value framework for the estate including availability, cost to serve, rationalisation savings delivered and user experience and report against it to business and IT leadership.
- Own the ServiceNow platform as a technical platform, and design IT service management process jointly with IT Service Delivery so that a single, coherent process operates across the service desks and the platform teams.
- Set and enforce the application lifecycle standard across the estate including currency, patching, supportability and end-of-life.
- Own the commercial relationship with the vendors and partners behind the estate within the group commercial framework, holding them to their obligations and to demonstrable value, and using contract and licence position as a lever for simplification.
- Set the sourcing strategy for application and platform support, deciding what is insourced, outsourced or delivered through managed service partners, and lead the negotiation of enterprise agreements and renewals for major platforms.
- Maintain the security and compliance posture of the estate in partnership with Cyber Security, and uphold architecture conformance with Enterprise and Solution Architecture.
- Work as the run-side counterpart to application and data development: give the business a trustworthy account of service performance, and route emerging demand to be shaped rather than absorbing it into the run function.
- Lead the consolidation and retirement of legacy business-managed systems, protecting operational continuity as those systems move into group support or wind down.
- Own the operational integration of applications from acquired or newly established businesses into group support, including due diligence on their supportability, risk and run cost.
- Design and own the organizational structure of Platform Operations, including defining and appointing team leads across platform and regional support, and lead the function through them. Build and develop a high-performing, globally distributed team across the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, France and other RES locations, including through the re-skilling of colleagues joining from legacy platforms.
- Own workforce planning, succession for critical platform roles, and the capability strategy for the function.
Serve as a member of the Global IT Operations leadership team, shape the annual IT plan and priorities, and act as the deputy for the Vice President, Global IT Operations as required.
Knowledge
- Application portfolio management, and the analysis that underpins consolidation, standardisation and retirement decisions at group scale.
- Operating and supporting a broad enterprise application estate, including ERP (IFS and SAP), corporate systems and business-specific applications.
- Enterprise platforms — Microsoft 365 and Azure, ServiceNow, Power Platform, Salesforce — and the disciplines of running them at scale.
- IT service management practice and the ITIL framework: incident, major incident, problem, change, configuration, release and service-level management.
- The economics of a technology estate: total cost of ownership, licence and contract structures, and the levers that reduce run cost without reducing service.
- Demand-build-run, or product and platform, operating models, and the run-readiness disciplines that keep the boundary between build and run intact.
- Application lifecycle, currency and supportability management, and the case for rationalising or retiring systems.
- Cyber security principles as they apply to a live application estate, and the regulatory and data-protection obligations that follow.
- Integration and data-flow patterns sufficient to diagnose and own incidents that cross system boundaries.
Skills
- Setting direction for a global function and leading it actively — visible in the operational detail when it matters, without taking the work back from the team.
- Building the case for rationalisation and carrying it with business leaders who are attached to the systems being consolidated or retired.
- Imposing a single global standard across territories with different histories, languages and established ways of working, without losing operational credibility.
- Running a service to measurable commitments, and reporting performance honestly when it falls short.
- Holding a firm working boundary with peer functions without escalating routine decisions.
- Reducing run cost through consolidation, automation and supplier management while protecting service.
- Building and developing multi-country technical teams, including through re-skilling and role change.
- Clear stakeholder management and communication to executive level, in English. Spanish is advantageous.
Experience
- At least 10 years in application support, platform operations or IT service management, including at least 5 years leading managers or team leads across multiple countries.
- Senior leadership of application support, platform operations or IT service functions at scale, ideally in asset-intensive, energy, utility, construction or infrastructure sectors.
- Accountability for a broad, multi-platform application estate serving several distinct businesses.
- Setting and delivering an application rationalisation or estate-simplification programme at group scale, and seeing the retirements through.
- Leading a globally distributed technology function across multiple countries, time zones and languages.
- Consolidating support that was previously distributed across business functions or regions into a single global function.
- Owning the run cost of an estate and delivering measurable reduction, or the absorption of new demand within a fixed envelope.
- Operating a demand-build-run or product and platform operating model, with a defined build-to-run handover.
Qualifications
- Masters Degree, or Chartered IT Professional (CITP) or equivalent professional experience preferred
- ITIL 4 Strategic Leader preferred.
- Portfolio and programme leadership. MSP (Managing Successful Programmes) preferred.
- Technology financial management. FinOps Certified Practitioner or the TBM Council's Technology Business Management certification preferred.
- Governance and Risk: COBIT or CISM preferred.
- Business continuity credentials such as CBCI beneficial or equivalent experience
- Familiarity with ISO/IEC 20000 preferred.
- Further relevant professional certifications — for example in enterprise platform administration, service management or portfolio delivery — are advantageous.
At RES, we celebrate differences as we know it makes our company a great place to work. Encouraging applicants with different backgrounds, ideas and points of view, we create teams who work together to solve complex problems and design practical solutions for our clients. Our multiple perspectives come from many sources including the diverse ethnicity, culture, gender, nationality, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability, marital status, parental status, education, social background and life experience of our people.
