HMRC offering a whopping £162,500 salary for a cloud transformation director

It could be you: HMRC wants a leader with experience of delivering £50m+ IT infrastructure transformation projects

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is on the hunt for a cloud transformation director - and is willing to pay up to £162,500 for the right person.

The government department said in a job advert that it had a "vision" for the provision of online, real-time services to be accessible from any device, any time using the latest cloud technology.

To support this vision, HMRC is looking for an IT leader who is "up for the challenge of delivering transformation on a massive scale".

"HMRC currently has a hugely complex IT estate, ranging from ‘state of the art' data analytics platforms to 40-year-old systems. The breadth, variety and complexity of these systems and the business processes they support are on a scale rarely seen in other global organisations," the advert reads.

HMRC is in the middle of a transitional period. HMRC chief digital and information officer Mark Dearnley has said that the organisation has "no plans" to extend its £10bn Aspire outsourcing deal beyond its current June 2017 deadline, in a bid to save taxpayers at least £200m in costs.

In June, HMRC issued a £20m tender for consultants to advise on its shift from its Aspire outsourcing arrangement as it moves from one mega-contract and multiple sub-contractors, to managing more than 400 IT suppliers. The aim is that no one single contractor will have a contract worth more than about £100m. This fits in with government aims to end large IT contracts and open up the market to small and medium-sized IT contractors and services firms.

And, indeed, the job advert for the cloud transformational director suggests that HMRC wants to "take back control of its IT architecture".

HMRC said that the director "will be responsible for the delivery of one of the UK's largest IT infrastructure change programmes, leading an expert technology team and third-party specialists, as HMRC takes back direct control of IT architecture, IT project delivery, systems integration, IT service support and operations".

The successful candidate will have to already be a "politically astute leader" with experience of delivering £50m+ infrastructure transformation projects across complex IT systems.

He or she must also have experience of leading multiple teams, suppliers and experts.

The person tasked with the job will report into Dearnley, and will be given a three-year, fixed-term full-time role.

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