Virtual School Associate Applications Engineer

Overview

Job title: Associate Applications Engineer

Salary: £32,061–£33,699 (C3)

Hours: 37 per week

Contract: Fixed Term / Temporary 2 Years

Location: Tech North / Other council and social care buildings / Hybrid

The Virtual School is seeking an Associate Applications Engineer to join a team working to promote the education of children who have needed the support of a social work intervention. The role focuses on managing the digital Personal Education Plan (PEP) platform, ensuring accurate records for looked after children and enabling access for key school contacts and social workers. You will help deliver better outcomes by enabling collaboration between education and social care through the platform.

As an Associate Applications Engineer, you will bring to the role skills in:

• User Management: maintenance of appropriate role-based access and licences
• Compliance: maintaining compliance of systems against GDPR, PCI, PSN and Cloud Security Principles; assess new and existing systems based on data sensitivity; deliver remediation actions for impacted systems
• Data Management: maintaining data integrity, data cleansing, retention & disposal
• Supplier and Contract Management: manage contracts with system suppliers, understand roadmaps, SLAs, raise and track issues, and plan supplier-delivered work
• Documentation of Processes: maintain accurate support documentation and ensure processes/templates are followed
• Maintaining Software Security: keep software up to date and applications secure through incident, problem, change, and configuration management and service improvements

The Associate Applications Engineer supports the administration and maintenance of the PEP platform, ensuring system security, reliability and fit for purpose. Responsibilities include managing user access, maintaining data quality, supporting schools and social care professionals to use the platform, and coordinating with suppliers and IDS colleagues on upgrades and service delivery. You will work within the Virtual School team to deliver PEP improvements and build strong relationships across schools and social care settings.

You will report to a Senior Data and Applications Officer and handle a high and variable workload with changing priorities.

We offer an employee experience with benefits including:

• A competitive salary and annual leave entitlement plus statutory holidays
• Membership of the West Yorkshire Pension Fund with generous employer contributions
• Flexible and hybrid working arrangements subject to service requirements
• A clear career pathway and continuing professional development opportunities
• A range of staff benefits to boost wellbeing and finances

• Work with the application support team, IDS teams, business areas and third-party suppliers to undertake application support activities
• Maintain support documentation and ensure support processes and templates are followed

There are five levels of Engineer roles in Application Operations; the Associate Engineer is the C3 level. Essential and desirable skills are as follows. The role requires a wide range of skills; no single candidate is expected to have every skill at the identified level.

• Essential
  • Systems Management:
    Diagnostics, monitoring and adherence to SLA
  • Compliance: GDPR, PCI, PSN and Cloud Security Principles; remediation planning
  • User Management:
    Access control and licence management
  • Change & Release Management: ITIL-aligned processes
  • Environment Management:
    Maintain environments and versions
  • Upgrades & Patching:
    Apply upgrades/patches to maintain compliance
  • Incident Management:
    Resolve issues with other technical teams
  • Testing:
    Co-ordinate and document UAT
  • Data Management:
    Data integrity, cleansing, retention & disposal
  • Supplier & Contract Management:
    Manage supplier relationships and SLAs
  • Legal & Statutory: FOIs and SARS; address legislative requirements
  • Operational Integrity: IT Disaster Recovery, security assessments, debt management of technical debt
  • Lifecycle Planning:
    Roadmap and lifecycle usage planning
  • Application Governance:
    Value from the application estate; consolidation or retirement as needed
• Desirable
  • Project Management concepts
  • Business knowledge and workflow concepts
  • Database schemas – Oracle/SQL
  • SQL developer tools
  • File formats knowledge
  • Integration mechanisms
  • languages (e.g., C#, HTML)

Right to Work This role is based in the UK. You must evidence the right to work in the UK prior to commencing employment. If you do not have the right to work, consider sponsorship eligibility before applying.

Application Please complete the online application form and refer to guidance on completing your application. For queries or informal chats about the role, contact Jancis Andrew or Sarah Cowley via phone or email as provided in the original description.