The Access Group is the UK’s leading software provider, delivering a broad suite of business management applications and services to multiple industry sectors. An extremely acquisitive company, Access has completed more than 60 M&A transactions and, in 6 years, has scaled revenues from £150M to £800M per annum. With 80,000+ customers and 5,500 staff across multiple geographies, Access plans to triple its size over the next 5 years through the delivery of a comprehensive Value Creation Plan, in addition to organic growth and introducing further territories (US and Europe).

Cloud Engineering is a division within Access and provides hosting infrastructure for the group’s software products. In addition, it also sells IaaS and MSP services and generates c. £40M of revenue from these activities alone. The division is highly technology focused and currently employs 220+ engineers that support an estate that spans 14 global datacenters, 8,000 virtual machines, and 15 petabytes of data. Services levels are critical as these systems underpin group revenues of £800M and services delivered into Health and Social Care, Legal and HR & Payroll, among others.

Whilst circa 75% of Access’ workloads reside on their own platforms, the remainder exist in hyperscalers (in particular, Microsoft Azure). There is an ambition that as Access scale to £1Bn in revenue and beyond, that more workloads reside in the cloud and therefore the next period of investment will require a significant transformation programme to achieve this. This is therefore one of the most high-profile Cloud Engineering Director roles in the European tech ecosystem.

Cloud Engineering is a global function, spanning EMEA and APAC. The APAC Cloud Engineering Director will be responsible for the global platform in tandem with their EMEA Counterpart, while partnering with the regional boards to drive strategic and commercial direction.

Responsibilities

• Reporting to the Senior Director for Cloud Engineering, this individual is the regional leader and part of the global management team for Cloud Engineering. With a dotted line to the regional Products and Engineering SVP, they will ensure a collaborative and partnership approach to drive success to the region and global operations. Access will scale to be a £2Bn software vendor in the next 5 years which will equate to more than 5x in compute and storage so need expert hosting to match that, along with the creativity and commercial awareness to make sure the hosted systems are on the right platforms at the right cost.
• Access maintain all different types, scales and ages of technology up to hyperscalers presence in AWS & Azure and down to VMWare in physical datacentres. The role will be charged with defining, evangelising and executing Access Cloud Strategy both regionally and across the global function.
• Operate as part of the Cloud Engineering organisation and enable migration and enablement towards a DevOps org structure. Create a seamless conduit for Engineers to deploy their software within an innovative environment.
• Present to the C-Level and Board on ROI and strategic planning as Access scale out its cloud capabilities, while being a strategic partner to the regional boards to deliver their vision and ensure commercial focus on cost of sale and hosting is maintained and optimised.
• Full accountability for the divisional P&L including operations, architecture, services delivery and automation teams.
• Cloud + Data Centre Infrastructure Management: Manage the design, deployment, and maintenance of cloud + local data centre infrastructure, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security of services.
• Performance Monitoring and Optimization: Monitor the performance of systems and applications, proactively identifying and resolving bottlenecks and performance issues.
• Cost Optimization: Develop cost management strategies to optimize cloud resource utilisation, identify cost-saving opportunities, and monitor cloud spending to align with budgets.
• Security and Compliance: Ensure the implementation and maintenance of robust security measures, data protection, and compliance with industry standards and regulations.
• Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Develop and oversee disaster recovery and business continuity plans for cloud services to ensure data integrity and service continuity during unforeseen events.
• Incident and Problem Management: Lead incident response and problem-solving efforts for cloud + data centre related issues, coordinating with technical teams and stakeholders to ensure timely resolutions.
• Capacity Planning: Forecast future capacity requirements, scaling cloud resources as needed to meet business demands and ensure optimal performance.
• DevOps Integration: Collaborate with Product & Engineering and operations teams to integrate DevOps practices, automate deployment processes, and implement continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
• Team Leadership and Development: Provide leadership and guidance to the cloud engineering operations team, fostering a culture of excellence, learning, and innovation. Ensure team members are adequately trained to support the technologies deployed in APAC and globally. Conduct performance evaluations, mentor team members, and facilitate professional growth.
• Cloud Governance: Establish and enforce cloud governance policies, standards, and best practices across the organization to maintain consistency and compliance.
• Reporting and Analytics: Develop and present regular reports on cloud infrastructure performance, operational metrics, and cost analysis to senior management.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including internal IT, product & engineering, and business units, to understand their cloud + infrastructure requirements and align cloud operations with organizational goals.

Key Experiences & Skills required

• Experience leading a sophisticated technology organisation within a global environment. Knowledge of Software / SaaS as well as infrastructure.
• Technology evangelist who has deep understanding of the old ‘classic data centre Infrastructure’ and the new ‘hyperscale’ with the ability to create a vision and practical plan to move between the two.
• Preferably comes from an engineering background with a track record of managing large operational teams but also has deep understanding of P&L management and can build and communicate a 5-year strategic plan.
• Thought leader in managed hosting and cloud services with the ability to drive change to create new organisational capabilities.
• Experience in developing products and services within the IaaS/MSP and ‘go to market’ strategies.
• Demonstrable ability to see outside of the box and maintain a big picture view at all times.
• Exposure to acquiring businesses, performing due diligence and technical M&A integration is a plus.
• Proven leadership skills with the ability to influence at all levels including experience of working at Board or Investor level.
• Ability to pivot between strategic thinking and operational delivery. Combination of vision (thinking strategically) and ability to deliver through tactical execution.
• Collaborative methodology
• Ability to defuse tense situations and put customer view point forwards
• Results driven – accountable, able to balance strategic thinking with attention to detail and operational end-to-end delivery, problem solving, prepared to go over & above when required.
• Have the ability to measure your success through the use of key performance indicators and scorecards.
• Excellent communication skills. You are a confident, clear, and warm communicator with a flexible and constructive approach to customers, cross-functional teams, and executive leadership.
• Leading and developing a team, to create a compelling long-term vision, strategy, and detailed roadmap.
• Must be able to attract top talent, build apprenticeship programmes and develop strong career development pathways for top talent.
• Self-motivated and self-directed.

What does Access offer you?

We are a growing software company, and we deliver on what we say we do! We take

the development of our people very seriously and we will work with you to carve

out your success plan and an opportunity to accelerate your career and make a

real difference.

On top of a competitive salary, our wellbeing days taking you to 25 days leave a year (rules apply) and a health contribution you’ll also be able to choose from a range of benefits to suit

you. We pride ourselves on being an organisation that gives back so you’ll also

have 3 charity days you can take to support something that matters to you.

At Access we’re all about helping everyone Love Work and Love Life. Why? Because

we believe people can only be their best when they can be themselves. So, if

you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn’t match

perfectly, we’d still love to hear from you. You might just be whom we are

looking for.

We love the fact that we’re all different. We believe by having more diverse

perspectives at work improves how we run our business, helps us to better

support our customers, and when you think about it, it’s just more fun!

What’s holding you back? Come and be part of our Amazing Access Family!

Love Work. Love Life. Be You.