Head of TechOps Delivery
Reporting to the Programme Director, as an experienced senior delivery leader you will own delivery for the TechOps portfolio, sitting as a peer to the senior technical Heads of – Platform Operations, Infrastructure & Network, Retail Operations, Disaster Recovery, DBA, Service Management and SRE – with real authority to challenge, block or reprioritise their plans, not simply coordinate them.
You will personally build and own the master critical path and dependency plan across the TechOps portfolio, and hold technical leads and Programme/Project Managers to account for their own delivery commitments, rather than aggregating what they self-report.
The ideal candidate will be a hands-on, technically credible delivery leader with a proven track record of running complex, high-risk infrastructure and platform programmes. They will be comfortable sanity-checking technical estimates directly, personally enforcing change control regardless of stakeholder seniority, and running the highest-risk programmes in the portfolio themselves rather than through a single Programme Manager reporting up. They will operate confidently at senior stakeholder level, be comfortable saying no where required, and ensure that risks, dependencies and ownership gaps are surfaced and closed before they force an escalation.
Your ultimate goal will be to close the authority and planning gap that has driven repeated late-stage delivery surprises across TechOps, and to embed trend-based, evidence-led delivery discipline as the new standard.
- Sitting as a peer to the senior technical Heads of (Platform Operations, Infrastructure & Network, Retail Operations, DR, DBA, Service Management and SRE), with real authority to challenge, block or reprioritise their plans rather than simply coordinate them.
- Personally building and owning the master critical path and dependency plan across the TechOps portfolio, independently tested rather than aggregated from team-supplied dates.
- Taking personal accountability for change control on every TechOps programme – no infrastructure, scope or database change proceeds without a formal, assessed gate, regardless of stakeholder seniority.
- Carrying genuine infrastructure, platform and database technical credibility, sanity-checking technical estimates directly and running the highest-risk programmes in the portfolio personally.
- Owning sequencing and prioritisation across all TechOps and DBA demand, surfacing capacity conflicts before they become crises and feeding directly into the cross-functional resourcing forum.
- Ensuring no environment or programme sign-off is issued while resilience or HA/fail-over testing remains outstanding, unless recorded as an explicit, dated, owned risk.
- Attaching a named owner and target date to every issue raised in reporting or sign-off communications before it is circulated, closing cross-team ownership gaps without escalation.
- Owning trend-based delivery confidence reporting – planned versus actual, forecast variance and direction of travel – replacing static RAG status across the TechOps portfolio.
- Holding technical leads and Programme/Project Managers to account for their own delivery commitments, rather than aggregating what they self-report.
- Building contingency into programme plans from evidenced variance, not assumption, and maintaining cutover and delivery plans as live, dependency-mapped documents rather than rebuilding them in ad hoc workshops.
- Escalating directly and without delay to the Programme Director, and to the Group CIO where required, on any risk to delivery, resourcing or compliance.
- Proven experience leading complex, multi-team technical or infrastructure delivery programmes at Head of/senior delivery level, ideally within TechOps, Platform Engineering, SRE or Infrastructure (required).
- Strong technical credibility across infrastructure, platform, database and network domains, sufficient to sanity-check technical estimates directly rather than defer to them (required).
- Demonstrable authority and gravitas to challenge, block and reprioritise plans owned by senior technical peers, operating as a peer to Heads of rather than being managed by them (required).
- A thorough understanding of programme and project management, with the ability to personally build and own a critical path and dependency plan rather than rely on team-supplied dates (required).
- Proven experience embedding and personally enforcing formal change control gates on infrastructure and scope changes, regardless of stakeholder seniority (required).
- Experience of portfolio and resource sequencing across multiple concurrent, high-risk programmes with contended technical resource (required).
- Outstanding leadership, problem-solving and organisational skills, with a hands-on delivery approach and the ability to run the highest-risk programmes personally (required).
- Excellent stakeholder management and reporting skills; comfortable saying no at senior levels, and able to produce RAID and status reporting that drives action, not just visibility (required).
- Experience within regulated, always-on operational environments (betting, gaming or financial services), where infrastructure resilience and compliance obligations are business-critical (preferred).
- Prior hands-on leadership of hardware refresh, data centre migration, disaster recovery or platform resilience programmes (preferred).
- Experience introducing trend-based or flow-metrics delivery reporting (planned versus actual, forecast variance, direction of travel) in place of static RAG status (preferred).
- Familiarity with Agile/product-led and flow-based delivery practices, and experience applying them to infrastructure or TechOps delivery (preferred).
- A competitive rate of pay and pension contribution (£85,000 -£100,000).
- Generous discretionary bonus schemes, incentives and competitions.
- An annual leave entitlement that increases with length of service.
- Access to an online GP 24/7, 365 days a year for you and your immediate family.
- Employee wellbeing support through our Employee Assistance Programme.
- Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Pay.
- Long Service Recognition.
- Access to a pay day savings scheme, financial coach and up to 40% of your earned wage ahead of payday, through Wagestream.
Betfred is a betting and gaming company that has operated for over 50 years, founded by Fred and Peter Done. It runs more than 1,300 betting shops and employs around 9,500 people, combining a large retail estate with online sports betting and gaming. In 2019 it entered the US sports betting market as Betfred Sportsbook, now operating in several states, and has established a presence in South Africa, where it holds a majority stake in the online betting company LottoStar. Headquartered in Warrington, England, Betfred emphasises customer service and responsible gambling across its operations.