Technical Services Lead
As a Technical Services Lead, you are the egoless technologist at the helm of a particular region and portfolio of work. Whilst we have specialist functions to drive recruitment, marketing, Academy and technical quality across the company, you as an individual will be the figurehead of technical excellence and a champion of our consultants, ensuring that your region is delivering on our promise of Best for client, best for colleague.
You will contribute to the shaping of Infinity Works-wide services and strategies. You will be responsible for the effective delivery of services, and engaging with customers and the wider tech industry and community.
In line with this, the range of your responsibilities is broad but you have a team of experts to rely on to make it all work. This role comes down to building strong relationships and taking an active part in the support and development of our staff and service offerings. This role forms part of a tight pair, sitting alongside a Client Services Lead. Working effectively as a pair is vital to the success of the individuals and of the region. You will be expected to share the responsibilities as you see fit and cover for each other when one is absent.
You can carry out this role at career level CL5 Associate Director and above.
Key principles
Hiring, developing and supporting great people
People are the heart of our business. Without great people, we cannot deliver to our customers. You are the authority on staff quality in your region and are accountable for making sure we hire the best people with solid skills, the right attitude, an open mind and lots of potential. You are accountable for implementing approaches that help our staff develop professionally and personally through a strong individual development plan, support, mentoring, training and opportunities to put learning into practice.
Focus on delivering for the customer
As well as the focus on technical aspects of delivery, you'll be accountable for the successful delivery of all projects and programmes within your region. You'll need to ensure that your team has the right set of skills to oversee all your projects whilst ensuring that effective ways of working and the appropriate levels of governance are in place and adhered to.
Responsibilities
Ensuring Technical Excellence
- You should know which technologies and solutions are being used on each of your engagements and why. The teams should feel you're engaged with the delivery and that you're there to support them.
- You ensure that our approach and designs are aligned to our customer's strategic direction, recognising opportunities to grow and become influential in the right places.
- You will work with the Engineering Practice Leads (EPLs) and Managing Consultants within your region to help support and upskill consultants on our engagements, whilst at the same time using their technical expertise to assure and validate those engagements.
- You should support all disciplines — technical excellence at Infinity is something applicable to all of our roles. You should understand our offerings and build a strong working relationship with specialists in less-represented disciplines.
- You will work with your peers and our SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) to ensure our service offerings and approaches are always at the forefront of best practices and are, where possible, industry-leading.
- Work with our central teams and Accenture to ensure we offer top-class training and learning opportunities to our employees. This includes working closely with our Academy team to help them support and develop their curriculum and capabilities.
Responsible for Delivery Quality
- You will work with your peers, EPLs and other Practice Leads to continually improve and evolve our delivery quality practices across Infinity Works.
- As Infinity Works and Accenture become more aligned, it's your responsibility to ensure we take the opportunity to raise the quality bar for not only Infinity Works, but also the wider Accenture.
- We're there to support our teams and customers, not get in their way. You will be a servant leader to these teams, regularly gathering feedback, and supporting them to ensure we're delivering value back through our processes.
- You will work with counterparts in Accenture to support the quality assessment processes that underpin significant business engagements.
Being a Leader of People
- Whether through direct line management or as the most senior person for the region, you act as a figurehead and set the tone for all consultants.
- You must ensure that the vision and plans are clearly communicated and that everybody feels energised by the role they have to play in the journey.
- Make sure that the career progression for everybody within the region is supported and that all staff get the development opportunities they want and need.
- Identify leaders of the future: make sure succession plans are in place for all key roles, including your own, and that Managing and Principal Consultants have objectives set, allowing them to play a key part in delivering the regional strategy.
- You must remain grounded and accessible to all; Infinity Works maintains a feeling of low hierarchy and encourages informal relationships at all levels.
Running a Smooth Operation
- Work alongside other regional leaders to ensure we have one strategy with regional execution and carefully balance the priorities of local objectives and the bigger picture.
- Work with our business development teams to ensure that we have a diverse and interesting variety of technical engagements.
- Work with recruitment and marketing to set long-term targets and plans for business generation and development of talent to meet demand within the region.
- Work with our national leadership team to ensure regional KPIs around employee satisfaction, delivery quality and regional developments are shared amongst peers and wider Accenture monthly.
- Ensure that all staff have career plans and objectives, get regular feedback, and that pay reviews are done to schedule with appropriate input from all parties.
Building a Regional Presence
- Engaging with the wider tech community is a great way to raise Infinity Works' profile with prospective customers and staff. Contributing to the community is in our DNA and something we see as a really important activity. You implement the Infinity Works strategy for community and events in your region, helping to establish Infinity Works credentials as knowledgeable technologists.
- You should ensure your region is active in the grassroots community by attending, hosting, organising and sponsoring events. This includes relevant user groups, conferences and tech festivals, as well as Infinity Works branded events.
- You should identify staff with public speaking potential and/or good ideas for a talk/event and ensure they are mentored through a process of gradually increasing their exposure. This could start with presenting at an internal Community of Practice but progress to an international conference.
- Work with our partners to support regional events and engagement. Look to make use of initiatives available through those partnerships to the benefit of our customers.
- Work with our marketing teams to identify opportunities to sponsor, host and invest in the regional institutions and make sure we are recognised as a champion for the local community.
- Work with central teams to ensure the region has a suitable hub which represents our culture and allows our teams and customers to collaborate.