System Implementation Lead

System Implementation Lead

Location: Hybrid – Hertfordshire HQ with travel to school sites across our growing south-east region and increasingly national presence, as required.

Salary Range: £39,809 - £42,971 per Annum (DOE)

Hours: Full-time, 37 hours per week

Contract: Permanent

HCL are leading contract caterers with a focus on school feeding. We have a commitment to deliver high-quality, nutritious, and engaging food experiences for children and staff across our primary schools, secondary schools, and commercial sites. We pride ourselves on our dynamic culture and our commitment to excellence. HCL has its own Citrus technology product which supports allergen food safety management for pupils and food ordering for parents, and which we have a strong and committed roadmap to develop further.

The System Implementation Lead is the market-facing ambassador of the Citrus platform. They ensure every school, parent community, kitchen, and HCL contract manager experiences a smooth, confident and high-quality “one-stop-shop” experience of Citrus our in-house developed industry leading school food ordering and management system.

The role offers a unique opportunity to impact the health and well-being of children while championing HCL's mission to make food a vital part of the educational experience.

Citrus Customer Mobilisation

• Work with the Project Manager and school facing colleagues to ensure smooth delivery and implementation of the Citrus product.
• Conduct school operational readiness checks including hardware commissioning, Wi-Fi viability, device login validation and general site readiness.
• Deliver user onboarding for school office staff and other relevant users.
• Support parent communication and activation steps with the Operations Managers to ensure a smooth go-live.
• Lead go-live preparation and on-the-day support, ensuring operational confidence across all user groups.
• Provide structured mobilisation-phase hypercare and complete mobilisation only when stability, satisfaction, and agreed success measures are met.
• Maintain accurate mobilisation status and communicate risks and issues to the Project Manager

Client Expereience Management

• Act as the primary HCL face of Citrus during mobilisation, providing a high-quality customer experience for schools, parents, contract managers, and internal teams.
• Support schools in understanding key Citrus processes, ensuring confidence in day-to-day operations.
• Assists in the triage of mobilisation-phase issues, directing school environment issues to the Support Desk or school ICT, workflow and training gaps, and any platform defects to the Citrus Platform Specialist.
• Collaborate with the Project Manager to ensure Citrus delivery aligns with wider customer mobilisation activity.

Operational Support

• Ensure schools understand their own and parent activities and are fully prepared for them

Product Development Support:

• Provide real-world field feedback to inform Citrus improvements, surfacing user behaviour, usability challenges, and opportunities for improvement and simplification.
• Work with the Citrus Platform Specialist and Product team to channel school and parent insights into continuous improvement.

This list should not be regarded as exhaustive, and the post holder will be expected to deliver other duties relevant and appropriate to this role and department.

Qualifications

• Experience in system deployment roll outs
• Project management training undertaken, with project management qualification desirable but not essential.

Skills & Competencies

• Experience of using project management tools.
• Able to work independently as well as part of a team.
• Able to work within a matrix management structure, directing colleagues where necessary to achieve goals.
• Strong organisational and time management skills with the ability to lead multiple go-lives in parallel.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement abilities with non-technical users.
• Understanding of data privacy principles from an operational user-handling perspective.
• Problem-solving mindset, adaptable, with strong customer empathy and attention to detail.
• There will be very regular travel to school sites and so access to a car and the ability to travel independently is essential. You will require business car insurance to fulfil this role.

Experience Requirements

• Proven experience in SaaS onboarding, service delivery, or client-facing solution implementation roles.
• Experience working with non-technical user groups, ideally in education, public sector or operational environments desirable.
• Fluency with using Microsoft Office Suite.

Behaviours / Cultural Fit

• “Can Do One Stop Shop” attitude
• Customer-first mindset, focused on delivering agreed promises.
• Highly adept at problem solving to ensure the highest level of customer outcomes for each mobilisation.
• Collaborative and adaptable, working across boundaries.
• Genuine passion for improving school food experiences and wellbeing.

This role will work within school environments and so a DBS check will be carried out.

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