It Innovation Developer

Description:

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

Over the next decade, our aspiration is to establish Birmingham in the top 50 of the world's leading universities. That's a pretty big aspiration, and high-quality digital services and infrastructure are crucial to achieving it. In recognition of that, a brand-new Digital Strategy combined with significant investments in technology mean this is an exciting time to join IT Services, ‘making IT happen’ at the University of Birmingham.

We want to attract outstanding, inspirational, and talented people, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. It's our role to ensure that our community has access to accessible, responsive, resilient, and secure systems and support. What we do enables our students, staff, researchers, visitors and partners to confidently and creatively use digital services, technology and data for the benefit of their learning, teaching, research or work.

The culture of IT Services is one of innovation, collaboration, excellence, and inclusivity, and we apply the principles of customer focus and continuous improvement to everything we do. We have an active People and Culture network, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Women in IT group, bi-annual making IT happen awards recognition programme, and a superb Social Committee which arranges regular activities and events.

Role Summary

This role will play an important part in the development of IT innovation initiatives as part of the university’s strategic framework and digital strategy. The role will focus on the discovery, development and application of creative technical solutions and ideas that help to advance the university, improve efficiency and user experience. The role will be involved in the development of a range of proof-of-concept projects using emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, and help to deliver activities to support IT innovation such as technology demonstrations, workshops, forums, and seminars. The role will support the creation of a network of contacts with innovators and sources of ideas within, and outside, the university and monitor the external environment, ensuring that the university’s approaches are fit-for-purpose and future looking.

The ability to quickly learn and experiment with new development frameworks, tools and technologies will be vital to the success of this role.

Main Duties

Technology

• To identify, evaluate and communicate emerging technologies, products, services, and methods in the context of the University’s goals.
• To conduct prototyping, pilot projects and proofs of concept to show and verify the value of emerging technologies to interested parties within the University.
• To advise on the adoption of innovations and the realisation of benefits by IT Services/University in general.
• To contribute to regular technology demonstrations and talks to share team outputs with stakeholders.
• To document the outputs of the team’s work and ideas to support knowledge transfer to other teams in IT services and the wider university.