IT & Cyber Security Lead

The Opportunity
The Labour Party is seeking an experienced IT & Cyber Security Lead to take ownership of IT operations, infrastructure, service delivery and cyber security for what is a complex, high-profile organisation.

This is a senior hands-on leadership role, combining strategic responsibility with practical delivery. You’ll lead and develop the IT team, shape the technology and cyber roadmap and advise senior stakeholders, while remaining close enough to the technology to tackle key operational, infrastructure and security challenges.

This is an opportunity to take on genuine organisation-wide technology leadership while remaining hands-on enough to make a visible impact. You’ll shape the future of IT and cyber security, strengthen resilience, develop the team and create reliable technology services capable of supporting periods of significant organisational activity.

Regular UK travel and occasional out-of-hours working will be required around major events, elections and significant incidents.

The Role
You’ll take responsibility for creating a trusted, secure and resilient IT service, building on existing improvements across IT service management, hybrid Azure infrastructure, end-user technology, cyber security, disaster recovery and workplace technology.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Leading, coaching and developing the IT team, creating greater ownership and capability.
• Owning and improving IT service management, service standards, reporting and user experience.
• Leading the continued development and security of the Azure environment, alongside identity, endpoints, networking and wider infrastructure.
• Owning the cyber security strategy, improvement roadmap, risk register, incident readiness and vulnerability management.
• Maintaining effective disaster recovery and business continuity arrangements.
• Leading IT planning and delivery during major events and periods of unusually high operational demand.
• Managing technology suppliers, contracts, budgets, procurement and investment decisions.
• Prioritising a broad portfolio of operational and improvement activity, knowing what to progress, delegate, pause or stop.
• Providing clear technology and cyber security advice to senior leaders.

The Person
With IT leadership or management skills, you will possess a breadth of experience and judgement to step into a role with organisation-wide responsibility.

You’ll ideally bring:

• Experience leading an IT service, operational team or significant technical function.
• Strong people leadership and team development skills.
• Good knowledge of IT service management and ITIL principles.
• Strong understanding of Azure/cloud, identity, endpoint management and networking.
• Practical cyber security knowledge, including risk, vulnerability management and incident response.
• Experience managing suppliers, contracts and technology budgets.
• Knowledge of disaster recovery and business continuity.
• Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Experience within a political organisation, membership body, charity or similarly fast-moving environment would be beneficial, though not essential.

Interviews will be held face to face in Newcastle on Wednesday 9th December.