About Us
Every day we deliver safe and secure energy to homes, communities, and businesses. We are there when people need us the most. We connect people to the energy they need for the lives they live. The pace of change in society and our industry is accelerating and our expertise and track record puts us in an unparalleled position to shape the sustainable future of our industry.
Our vision is to be recognised as a world leading Information Technology and Digital function in the energy sector and a trusted partner across National Grid businesses. In the Chapter Director role, you will lead the development of innovative capabilities and implement processes that align with organisational goals, drive performance, and assure quality. You will create a positive work environment that motivates employees, supports their health and wellbeing, and establishes effective working relationships with suppliers for mutual benefit, all while achieving and maintaining compliance with national and international standards. Your leadership and guidance will empower individuals to reach their full potential and make a lasting impact on our vision.
National Grid is hiring a Chapter Director, Infrastructure Automation Engineering for our IT & Digital department. This is a hybrid role based in Warwick.
About The Role
This position will be responsible for leading and managing a collaborative, cross-functional group of infrastructure automation engineering professionals within a centralized IT organisation. The role is critical for ensuring the optimal design, implementation, and support of advanced infrastructure automation solutions. As the Chapter Director – Infrastructure Automation Engineering your key roles and responsibilities will include:
Establishing the right standards:
- Define and communicate expected practices and guardrails for infrastructure automation engineering based on industry best practices.
- Adapt practices to align with the maturity level and strategic objectives of the organization.
- Ensure that infrastructure automation engineering aligns with National Grid's future state blueprint and roadmap.
- Collaborate with business and enterprise leaders to develop practices tailored to edge-case technologies or unique business situations, as required.
Develop the right skills:
- Map expected competencies & certifications against each role & level in the Chapter
- Design career path including performance expectations and promotion criteria
- Partner with Learning and Development teams to design targeted training & certification curriculum
- Operationalize periodic skill surveys to assess any skill & training gaps
- Define objective process e.g., code reviews, to assess member skills
Deliver the right capacity:
- Track supply of and aggregate demand for Chapter resources
- Collaborate with executive leadership to ensure Chapter members are allocated to the most impactful Teams unlocking business value, orchestrating spikes where warranted
- Collaborate with other Chapter Leads to facilitate career moves across Chapters for career growth & cross-training
- Facilitate and manage workforce supply / demand approach based on strong collaboration with Platform Leads and Owners
- Develop a recruiting strategy for Chapter members and participate in recruiting process by making final hiring recommendations
Manage / deliver for internal and external stakeholders
- Demonstrate subject matter expertise in all areas of development and innovation in Chapter domain, both internally and externally
- Ensure Platform Leads and other stakeholders know what resources and knowledge are available to them
- Identify and define Chapter OKRs, by also collaborating, with Platform Leads to ensure alignment to overall goals
- Collaborate with executive leadership to ensure Chapter members are allocated to the most impactful Teams unlocking business value, orchestrating expansion and contraction based on prioritization
Infrastructure Engineering Focus
- Foster collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and the adoption of best practices within the infrastructure automation engineering community.
- Develop and promote frameworks and guidelines to standardize infrastructure architecture, design principles, and operational procedures.
- Arrange workshops, seminars, and training programs to enhance the skills of infrastructure automation engineering teams and keep them updated on emerging trends.
About You
- Significant experience in leading cross-functional teams in infrastructure automation engineering, with a strong focus on establishing best practices, developing talent, and aligning engineering efforts with organisational goals and strategic objectives.
- Proficiency in developing infrastructure automation solutions and implementing zero downtime techniques in Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environments.
- Experience with infrastructure automation tools such as Terraform, Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, AWS CloudFormation, and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) practices.
- Experience with automating the management user accounts, groups, and permissions within Active Directory, including creating, modifying, and disabling user accounts, managing group memberships, and implementing role-based access control (RBAC).
- Proficiency in managing and automating Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to enforce security policies, manage user settings, and deploy software applications across the Active Directory environment.
- Strong background in cloud networking approaches along with the ability to work within a regulated secure environment.
- Understanding of software engineering best practices and design patterns relevant to infrastructure automation, ensuring robust and scalable solutions.
- Experience working in Agile methodologies such as SAFE, Scrum, or Kanban, for efficient and iterative infrastructure automation project management.
More Information
A competitive salary between £85,000 – £105,000 – dependent on capability
As well as your base salary, you will receive a company car or allowance, a bonus of up to 20% of your salary for stretch performance and a competitive contributory pension scheme where we will double match your contribution to a maximum company contribution of 12%. You will also have access to a number of flexible benefits such as a share incentive plan, a salary sacrifice technology scheme, support via the employee assistance line and matched charity giving to name a few.
At National Grid, we work towards the highest standards in everything we do, including how we support, value and develop our people. Our aim is to encourage and support employees to thrive and be the best they can be. We celebrate the difference people can bring into our organisation, and welcome and encourage applicants with diverse experiences and backgrounds, and offer flexible and tailored support, at home and in the office.
Our goal is to drive, develop and operate our business in a way that results in a more inclusive culture. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, the innovation from diverse teams & perspectives and business need. We are committed to building a workforce so we can represent the communities we serve and have a working environment in which each individual feels valued, respected, fairly treated, and able to reach their full potential.