University of Birmingham
IT Innovation Operations Specialist (AI) - IT Services - 107877 - Grade 7
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Position Details
IT Services
University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK
Full Time
Starting Salary: £36,636 to £46,049 with potential progression to £48,822
Grade: 7
Contract: Full Time, Fixed Term up to October 2028
Closing Date: 20th September 2026
Our Offer to You
People are at the heart of what we are and do.
The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognized as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.
We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.
We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.
Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidized day nurseries.
The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.
Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham [https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/jobs/staff-benefits]
Background
The University of Birmingham is a global institution working within a diverse and vibrant City, offering an inspiring education to our students, and undertaking critically important research. We are a place of open, critical thinking, and the creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge. Professional Services put students at the heart of all they do and enable an exceptional educational experience. They provide outstanding support to our researchers and help the University to grow its influence regionally, nationally, and globally. They ensure the University’s resources are used wisely, manage and improve the infrastructure which sits at the heart of the institution, and support decisions to be made quickly and based on sound evidence. Our Birmingham Professional programme [https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/excellence/professional/index.aspx#:~:text=The Birmingham Professional programme,pioneering spirit, purposefulness and pragmatism.] operates across the University, supporting colleagues to network and collaborate, offering opportunities to learn and develop, contributing to the delivery of the University’s objectives, and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work.
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Department Overview
Over the next decade, our aspiration is to establish Birmingham in the top 50 of the world's leading universities. That's a pretty big aspiration, and high-quality digital services and infrastructure are crucial to achieving it. In recognition of that, a brand-new Digital Strategy combined with significant investments in technology mean this is an exciting time to join IT Services, ‘making IT happen’ at the University of Birmingham.
We want to attract outstanding, inspirational, and talented people, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. It's our role to ensure that our community has access to accessible, responsive, resilient, and secure systems and support. What we do enables our students, staff, researchers, visitors and partners to confidently and creatively use digital services, technology and data for the benefit of their learning, teaching, research or work.
The culture of IT Services is one of innovation, collaboration, excellence, and inclusivity, and we apply the principles of customer focus and continuous improvement to everything we do. We have an active People and Culture network, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Women in IT group, bi-annual making IT happen awards recognition programme, and a superb Social Committee which arranges regular activities and events.
Role Summary
This role will play an important part in the operational support and administration of IT innovation initiatives as part of the university’s strategic framework and digital strategy. The role will focus on the deployment, administration, monitoring, and operational management of innovative technical solutions and platforms that help to advance the University, improve its efficiency and enhance user experience.
A primary focus for this role in the new term will be the comprehensive administration and operational rollout of the NebulaOne AI platform, ensuring its stability, user access management, and performance. Additionally, the post holder will manage and maintain operational views of Service Innovation and Automaton (SIAP) delivered platforms and applications, establishing clear monitoring, dashboards, and health checks to ensure seamless service delivery.
You will be joining the University of Birmingham at the beginning of a digital transformation through an ambitious initiative to transition innovative AI and automation solutions into stable, business-as-usual operations across Professional Services, education and research. As part of the IT Innovation team you will play a pivotal role in keeping these AI, innovation, and automation systems running smoothly, minimizing downtime, and directly shaping the future of service delivery at the University.
The ability to quickly learn and work with new platform administration tools, monitoring dashboards, and operational frameworks will be vital to the success of this role.
Main Duties
Platform Administration & Operations
- NebulaOne AI Platform Management: Serve as the primary administrator for the NebulaOne AI platform being rolled out in the new term; managing user provisioning, configuration, environment management, cross charging and license allocations.
- SIAP Platform Monitoring: Establish, configure, and maintain operational views, health dashboards, and performance metrics for all SIAP-delivered platforms and applications to ensure service availability and proactive incident management.
- Incident & Problem Resolution: Troubleshoot operational issues escalated from SIAP-delivered tools and the NebulaOne platform, coordinating with developers or external vendors where necessary to resolve complex system faults.
- System Maintenance & Upgrades: Plan, coordinate, and execute routine updates, patch management, and maintenance schedules for innovation platforms to minimize disruption to academic and administrative processes.
- Operational Reporting: Regularly review and communicate platform utilization statistics, performance trends, and service-level achievements to key stakeholders across IT Services.
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Service Support & Knowledge Transfer
- Documentation: Maintain comprehensive operational playbooks, disaster recovery procedures, and system configuration documentation to support knowledge transfer and continuous service improvement.
- Business-as-Usual Integration: Work alongside Professional Services teams to run, monitor, and troubleshoot existing automation workflows, ensuring high-volume and time-critical operations proceed without interruption.
- User Support & Training: Support the delivery of system-use demonstrations, onboarding sessions, and operations workshops to enable university staff to confidently utilize NebulaOne and SIAP-delivered tools.
- Miscellaneous Duties
- Promote equality and value diversity, acting as a role model and fostering an inclusive working culture.
- Support the University’s sustainability agenda through resource-efficient working.
- Any other duties commensurate with the grade.
Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience
Essential
- Education & Experience: Educated to Degree level (or equivalent qualifications) or relevant technical qualification and considerable relevant experience in platform administration or IT operations. Where no equivalent qualification is held, significant practical operational experience in a series of demanding technical roles is required.
- Platform Administration: Proven experience in the system administration and operational management of enterprise IT systems, ideally involving AI platforms, SaaS applications, or complex software suites.
- Monitoring & Observability: Strong skills in setting up and interpreting operational monitoring views, dashboard systems (e.g., Azure Monitor, Grafana, AWS CloudWatch, or similar), and analyzing application logs to troubleshoot performance.
- Cloud Infrastructure Knowledge: Working operational knowledge of modern cloud environments such as Azure (Microsoft) or AWS (Amazon Web Services).
- AI & Automation Awareness: Knowledge of emerging educational technologies, with a specific focus on the operational and administrative aspects of managing machine learning and AI applications in higher education.
- Communication & Collaboration: Strong communication skills, including the ability to present technical system status clearly to non-technical stakeholders and collaborate with multidisciplinary team members.
- Equality & Diversity: Knowledge of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010, and how to actively ensure in day-to-day activity in own area that those with protected characteristics are treated equally and fairly.
Desirable
- Scripting Skills: Good scripting skills (e.g., Python, SQL, PowerShell, or Bash) to assist in system maintenance, log parsing, and automated operations management.
- ITIL/Service Management: Familiarity with ITIL practices or structured IT Service Management (ITSM) environments (incident, change, and release management).
- Workflow Support: Experience in monitoring and maintaining automated workflows or robotic process automation (RPA) tools (e.g
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