Jake Fraser

Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK in 2024.

Jake is a proud and pragmatic nerd, with in-depth experience delivering a vast range of technical and operational support functions, accompanying strategic direction, and good management practice. Everything he does in a professional context is guided by his personal core values of accuracy, integrity, knowledge and service. He considers these critical in shaping and monitoring his intentions, actions, and development as an authentic, trustworthy and highly capable leader.

How did you get into IT?

A gap year job turned into an amazing opportunity just a few years later to become the IT Manager of a 120-strong PR agency. I learned very quickly the human elements of technology and was supported through the 13 years I spent at that organisation to really get under the skin of user and organisational needs. I've always found the outcomes and value that users get from technology the most rewarding thing to observe. I learned a great deal of the skills I have today while on the job, and strongly feel this route can be overlooked by others seeking to get into IT. For anyone looking to get into IT, I can passionately vouch for any apprenticeship or similar opportunities out there!

What do you consider your greatest IT achievement of the last 12 months?

I've been unfortunately dealing with a cancer diagnosis in the last few months, and I cannot overstate how proud I am to have built and fostered a pair of managers and teams reporting to them who have gone far beyond to deliver project milestones, business value and stakeholder engagement while I have been out of the business getting treatment. It has been a joy to watch a high-performing team who are all aligned to the organisation's needs through close collaboration and effective communication about where tech will and won't solve a problem.

Culturally, we have shifted our mindset in the last year, moving from IT being a solution provider to an approach where IT work in partnership with all levels of users and across departments and silos to unlock opportunities. This gives us an amazing foundation to build on and really transform how we operate as an organisation to deliver our charitable goals.

How do you ensure diversity is taken into account in your IT recruitment?

The progression paths I referred to last year are coming to fruition in many cases, but we continue to recruit both internally and externally offering apprenticeships and other alternate pathways to support career development and take advantage of valuable business knowledge from existing colleagues.

There is still a great deal to be done, particularly in gender diversity amongst IT and the broader technical and engineering fields. Getting into primary and secondary education to challenge the perceptions of traditionally male-dominated professions is vital to ensure students don't rule out career options based on these perceptions alone. When picking suppliers it's important to challenge them on what they're doing in this space, too. It will take a collective effort across the IT industry to improve the diversity of people who choose a career in IT.

Which technology are you currently most excited by, and why?

It might sound unusual but I'm first going to say I'm not excited by AI. It's taken over from "cloud" as the buzzword appearing most often in news and vendor collateral. It's used without care or insight in so many cases, and I feel strongly that the industry needs to start getting real with what they mean - otherwise it's going to dilute the value of using AI well and responsibly.

I'm most excited at the moment by the possibilities data platforms are offering, with two-way ETL capabilities finally making accessible to small and mid-size organisations the proper integrations between best-of-breed solutions. The potential to not just bring quality-managed data in, but then distribute it out again, creates value as a multiplier and improves data quality, which is essential both across an organisation generally but also when using it with ML and LLMs. Quality in = better results!

What would an outsider find the most surprising part of your job?

Being a great technology leader requires little technical skill; instead it requires excellent communication and the ability to translate and listen properly. That being said, having progressed my career through the various technical levels I enjoy being hands-on when the opportunities arise, and sometimes the headspace afforded by practical tasks gives you time to process a complex problem.

I'd also add that I continue to enjoy seeing the broad range of questions that come in to our IT Helpdesk team, as they've become well known as problem solvers. Often despite it not being strictly an IT issue to solve or question to answer, the team apply their problem solving skills and help the user get working again which adds value however you look at it.

What's your secret talent? Can you roll your tongue, or play the oboe?

Well, as you've mentioned it in the prompt, I do happen to possess a grade 2 for the oboe! I'm also a bit of a single malt whisky nerd and have been working on building my palate to enjoy some of the quirkier and peatier stuff coming out of the islands and highlands. I'm planning on going for WSET spirits levels one and two this year.

What makes you laugh?

The number of times "turn it off and on again" works, as infuriating as it is. This applies to everything from hardware to microservice applications running on public cloud.