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About the Role

The Director of Applications is a new, senior role accountable for the availability, configuration, and ongoing evolution of TBI's core business platforms: Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft 365 / Azure. This role leads the Applications function, owns the platform Centre of Excellence, and provides technical leadership to translate business needs into delivered platform capability.

Responsibilities

• Accountable for the availability, configuration, and ongoing management of TBI's three strategic platforms: Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft 365 / Azure.
• Own the platform-level roadmaps that enable delivery of the Digital Roadmap, in close collaboration with the Digital Leadership Team and Platform Leads.
• Establish and lead the platform Centre of Excellence; platform-specific standards, delivery patterns and an internal community across the platform leads and developers.
• Line management responsibility for the Build team.
• Own engineering practice across the Applications function: source control and repository governance (GitHub, Salesforce via Gearset), CI/CD pipelines, environment management (dev/test/UAT/prod parity and access), release management and test strategy / automation.
• Define and enforce technical execution standards for releases, distinct from the change control approval process.
• Define and lead engineering standards, architectural patterns and Infrastructure as Code.
• Accountable for the operational availability of TBI's internal AI platforms (Claude, Agentforce, AI assistants) and ongoing AI consumption cost and budget management.
• Own AI usage monitoring: drift, hallucination and misuse pattern detection, partnering with the Director of Security & Compliance.
• Provide the operational foundation that enables TBI's Agentic AI and Generative AI capability pillars.
• Own scaling (design and operation), rightsizing and optimisation of cloud and SaaS resources.
• Own application monitoring, alerting and on-call response for in-scope platforms.
• Lead cross-platform test strategy and quality standards.
• Partner with the Digital Leadership to translate business needs (the Digital Roadmap) into platform-level delivery (Platform Roadmaps).
• Partner with the Director of Security & Compliance on identity, access, secret management and DevSecOps practices embedded in CI/CD.
• Partner with the Enterprise Architect on significant technical decisions and integration patterns.
• Support the CTO with platform investment cases, vendor negotiation for strategic platforms and Executive-level reporting on platform health.

Requirements

• Significant senior leadership experience running enterprise application functions in a mid-to-large global organisation.
• Deep expertise in at least two of: Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft 365 / Azure or AWS as enterprise platforms (configuration, integration, governance, licensing, support).
• Demonstrable experience embedding modern engineering practice incl. CI/CD pipelines, source control governance, environment management, release management, automated testing, in a SaaS-heavy environment.
• Track record of building and running Centres of Excellence around major platforms.
• Experience operationalising AI platforms and managing AI consumption cost is a strong advantage.
• Strong understanding of how applications-layer decisions intersect with security, identity, data and architecture, and a collaborative working style with peers in those functions.
• Experience managing technical leads and platform specialists, and a track record of developing them.
• Comfortable operating at executive level on platform investment cases and roadmap trade-offs.
• Pragmatic and delivery-oriented; able to make and defend decisions about where to invest engineering effort.
• Open and progressive; bold and pragmatic; an optimistic changemaker — aligned with TBI's core beliefs.
• Candidates must have the legal right to work in the UK to apply for this role.

Skills

• SaaS platforms
• Modern engineering practice (CI/CD, source control, environment and release management, test automation)
• Running mission-critical business systems globally
• Salesforce
• Workday
• Microsoft 365 / Azure
• AWS
• AI platforms
• AI consumption cost management
• Cloud resources
• SaaS resources
• Application monitoring
• Alerting
• On-call response
• Cross-platform test strategy
• Quality standards
• Identity management
• Access management
• Secret management
• DevSecOps
• CI/CD
• Platform investment cases
• Vendor negotiation
• Executive-level reporting
• Infrastructure as Code

Location

• UK

Work Type

• Full-time

Experience Level

• Senior leadership

About the Company

• At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, we work with political leaders around the world to drive change.
• We help governments turn bold ideas into reality so they can deliver for their people.
• We do it by advising on strategy, policy and delivery, unlocking the power of technology across all three.
• And by sharing what we learn on the ground, so everyone can benefit.
• We do it to build more open, inclusive and prosperous countries for people everywhere.
• We are a global team of over 800 changemakers, operating in more than 40 countries, across five continents.
• We are political strategists, policy experts, delivery practitioners, technology specialists and more.
• We speak more than 45 languages.
• We are working on over 100 projects, tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges.
• We’re all here at TBI to make a difference.
• In a world of ever more complex challenges, we believe diversity of background and perspective is a strength.
• We pride ourselves on a culture that values and nurtures difference.
• We are dedicated to unlocking potential, not only for the countries we work in but also for each of our team members.
• No matter where you’re from or who you are, if you’re passionate about the transformative power of progressive politics, we invite you to build a better future with us.