Job title: Associate Applications Engineer

Salary: C3 £32,061 - £33,699

Hours: 37 hours per week

Contract: Fixed Term / Temporary 2 Years

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

The Virtual School is excited to be seeking an Associate Applications Engineer to join our passionate, experienced and skilled team working to promote the education of children who have, at some point in their lives, needed the support of a social work intervention to keep them safe. That might mean children who currently have a child in need or child protection plan, those in our care or care experienced, children living in kinship families and those who are adopted.

As an Associate Applications Engineer you’ll thrive on using both technical knowledge of systems and working with system users to maximise the user experience.

It’s not about an on-line learning service! Your role will be to manage our digital personal education planning (PEP) planning platform. You will ensure that the system holds accurate records for all our looked after children and that key contacts in the child’s school and their social worker can access the system to record the details of each child’s PEP. Whilst you won’t be working directly with children and young people, you will be a key person in how we deliver better outcomes for the children in our care. You will be an enabler between education and social care, through the platform, bringing together the practice so that our children get better outcomes.

Leeds City Council is one of the largest employers in the region with over 14,000 employees. We seek to recruit and develop talented individuals who embody our council values and ambitions.

About you

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

User Management: maintenance of appropriate role-based access, effective management of system / user licences
Compliance: maintaining compliance of systems against GDPR, PCI, PSN and Cloud Security Principles and assessing new and existing systems based on data sensitivity. Delivery of any remediation action plans for impacted systems.
Data management: maintaining the integrity of the data within systems, undertaking cleansing activities, data management (retention & disposal)
Supplier and Contract Management: managing the contract with system suppliers ensuring we understand roadmaps, SLAs are in place and being adhered to, issues are raised and tracked and plans in place for work being delivered by the supplier
Documentation of Processes: Maintain accurate support documentation and ensures that agreed processes and templates are consistently followed.
Maintaining Software Security: Ensure software is up to date and applications remain secure by carrying out tasks related to incident, problem, change, and configuration management, as well as engaging in ongoing service improvement initiatives.

About the role

The Associate Applications Engineer plays an important role within the Virtual School Team, supporting the effective administration and maintenance of the digital Personal Education Plan (PEP) platform. The postholder will help ensure the system is secure, reliable and fit for purpose, with responsibility for managing user access, maintaining data quality, supporting schools and social care professionals to use the platform effectively, and working closely with suppliers and Integrated Digital Services (IDS) colleagues to resolve issues, implement system upgrades and support service delivery.

The role is integral to our Virtual School team and you’ll be working alongside skilled and knowledgeable practitioners with strong links to integrated digital systems teams. You’ll help us deliver PEP improvements in quality and timeliness and build effective and helpful relationships across schools, settings and social care services. You’ll report to an experienced Senior Data and Applications Officer and benefit from an inclusive team who work collaboratively together. You will need to be skilled at managing a high and variable workload where priorities can change on a daily basis and where being able to account for the difference you make is key. You will be doing more than managing user licenses – you will be contributing to better outcomes for our children and we want you to be as passionate about that as we are.

What we offer you

We take pride in offering the best 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 help you boost your wellbeing and make your money go further

How to apply

Please complete the online application form.

Read our guidance for further advice on completing your application.

If you have any queries or would like an informal chat about the role please email Jancis Andrew jancis.andrew@leeds.gov.uk or Glenn Simpson Glenn.Simpson@leeds.gov.uk with a preferred number to contact you and we will get back to you.

A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check against the Children’s or Adults’ barred list as applicable will be carried out on preferred candidates. Read our recruitment of ex-offenders policy.

We welcome applications from everyone and actively seek a diverse range of applicants from all backgrounds and cultures. We particularly encourage applications from, but not limited to, women, carers, veterans as well as LGBT+, ethnically diverse, disabled and care experienced people.

This role is based in the UK. Home Office guidance states that candidates must evidence their right to work in the UK prior to commencing employment, either as a UK or Irish citizen, under the EU Settlement scheme or having secured any other relevant work visa.

If you do not have the right to work in the UK, you must consider your own eligibility for sponsorship for a particular role through the Skilled Worker visa route before applying. To be eligible for sponsorship you'll usually need to be paid the standard salary rate of at least £41,700 per year or meet one of the other eligibility criteria. Ensure you are eligible before applying.

Job Description

Job Purpose:

What a C3 Application Operation – Associate Engineer does

Work with colleagues in application support team, other IDS teams, business areas and & third-party suppliers to undertake application support activities as defined in the IDS Application Management Core Service Offering document
Ensure support documentation is maintained
Ensure applications support process and templates are followed

Engineer – Application Operation roles

There are 5 levels of Engineer role in Application Operations:

Principal Engineer – PO6
Lead Engineer – PO4
Senior Engineer – PO2
Engineer – SO2
Associate Engineer – C3

Each role has a set of essential and desirable technical skills associated with it alongside complimentary essential core competencies. The roles require a wide range of skills. The essential and desirable skills shown below demonstrate this, it is not expected for any one individual to have every skill at the identified level.

PERSONAL SPECIFICATION: Method of Assessment will be through one or more of the following Application Form, Test, Interview, and Certificate.

ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS: It is essential that the Candidate should be able to demonstrate the following criteria for the post within the context of the specific role duties and responsibilities: Candidates will only be shortlisted for interview if they can demonstrate on the application form that they meet all the essential requirements

Systems Management :This involves undertaking diagnostics & system monitoring to ensure systems are up and running and on required version and ensuring the agreed Service Level Agreement (SLA) is being adhered to.
Compliance: Maintaining compliance of systems against GDPR, PCI, PSN and Cloud Security Principles and assessing new and existing systems based on data sensitivity. Delivery of any remediation action plans for impacted systems.
User Management: Maintenance of appropriate role-based access, effective management of system / user licences
Change & Release Management: Ensuring system changes and releases are managed in line with IDS processes e.g., ITIL
Environment Management:Ensuring all environments are maintained and in line and on required version(s)
Upgrades & Patching: Implementing all agreed upgrades / patches to ensure systems are up to date and on relevant compliant versions
Incident Management: Working with other technical teams to ensure system issues are promptly resolved, underlying issues understood, and any remediation activities are undertaken
Testing Activities: Undertaking agreed technical testing and co-ordinating the business to ensure UAT is successfully completed and documented
Data Management: Maintaining the integrity of the data within systems, undertaking cleansing activities, data management (retention & disposal)
Supplier & Contract Management: Managing the contract with system suppliers ensuring we understand roadmaps, SLAs are in place and being adhered to, issues are raised and tracked and plans in place for work being delivered by the supplier
Legal & Statutory: Dealing with FOIs and SARS as well as ensuring the business can address any legislative and legal requirements (over and above upgrades and patches)
Operational Integrity: Involvement in the running of at least an annual IT Disaster Recovery Test, Security Assessment - co-ordination of security assessment activities including oversight of any corrective action(s). Maintenance of Technical Debt and analysis and reporting on all incidents
Lifecycle Planning: This is about ensuring that a plan is in place for how the application will be used during its lifecycle, that there is a roadmap and plan for what changes will happen during the life of the system
Application Governance: Application governance is all about determining whether the Council is getting maximum value from its application estate and consolidate, retire or replace as appropriate

DESIRABLE REQUIREMENTS: It is desirable that the candidate should be able to demonstrate the following criteria for the post within the context of the specific role. Candidates are not required to meet all the Desirable requirements however these may be used to distinguish between acceptable candidates.

Project Management Concepts: Covering concepts such as planning, risk management, stakeholder management, project governance and key project documentation
Business Knowledge & Workflow Concepts:Understands the business processes that the application(s) being supported supports. Able to design and implement system workflows to support
Database Schemas – Oracle / SQL: Understands how the underlying database(s) that support the application are set up and operate. Able to execute queries against the database with no impact to live service
SQL Developer Tool: Understand how to use the integrated development environment tool for working with SQL in Oracle databases
File Formats: Understands the different file formats associated with each application and when each type should be used
Integration Mechanisms: Understands and maintains the integration mechanisms (in line with IDS best practice) for applications
Non-.Net Languages – C#, HTML: Understands which programming languages are in use for the systems being supported