The Opportunity

Your role will be to lead the technical development of digital and data products and projects which are designed to change lives. Recent examples include:

·         Family Context – building APIs, a user interface, and a legal and ethical framework which help children’s social workers see what information schools, police, and housing teams hold on a family. Currently in beta.

·         Greater Manchester Data Platform – working out: what use cases exist for a common data platform across a range of public services; what technical, ethical, political, and change management barriers would need to be overcome to realise those; and developing a roadmap to implementation. Currently in discovery, and we hope to work on the build as well.

·         Leaving Well – designing, building, and running an app for children leaving local authority care to put them in control of the services they receive as they transition to adulthood without a traditional family to support them. Currently live.

Sometimes you will run and support internal teams, particularly in discoveries, but in build you will more often be managing external partners. This will include code review – you are a technical lead not just a project manager.

You will be a part of the digital and data team’s senior management and an important voice in our impact strategy: what goals we focus on, which projects we take on, who we partner with, and what capabilities we develop.

About You

We expect that your skills and experience will make you comfortable in:

·         Being the client-facing technical lead during a sales process - we need the charities, social enterprises and public sector bodies we support to feel comfortable with us whether the work is funded by them, by investors, or through a grant.

·         Leading solution design with clients - adapting to their budget, skills, and legacy tech – whilst supporting non-technical colleagues to understand the technical implications of clients’ needs, constraints, and preferences.

·         Managing partners to ensure that any elements they build fit clients’ and users’ needs and are delivered to the right standard. Regular delivery partners currently include Infinity Works, Softwire, and Pivotal Labs.

·         Building our technology practice through leading on coaching, training, and recruitment of technical staff, and through developing our ways of working.

·         Advising and quality assuring a wide range of projects using a variety of technologies

Experience with the public and social sector is desirable – but not a must. With or without that experience you’ll need to be excited about delivering projects which have a huge social impact and in which success often hinges on your ability to find creative ways to make progress despite clients’ resource constraints and legacy tech.

You’ll be interested in bringing ethics into your work – thinking about how design decisions exacerbate or counter problems such as structural racism and algorithmic bias, or the tendency towards state surveillance of disadvantaged populations. Lived experience of marginalisation, and of developing inclusive services would be extremely valuable.

You will work across multiple projects simultaneously and have a client facing role including business development.

To view the full job advert please go to https://www.socialfinance.org.uk/careers/vacancies