Lead, Technology Solutions

Job Title: Lead Technology Solutions

About the Role

We are looking for a Director of Productivity & Collaboration to lead the strategy delivery and continuous improvement of the tools platforms and services that enable our workforce to communicate collaborate and work productively. This leader will own the end-to-end lifecycle of our productivity and collaboration ecosystem from technical architecture and vendor contracts to team leadership and stakeholder engagement ensuring the organization has secure modern and cost-effective tools that scale with the business.

This is a highly cross-functional role that blends deep technical expertise with people leadership financial stewardship and relationship management. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable in a vendor negotiation a budget review an architecture design session and a leadership team meeting.

Key Responsibilities

As a direct report to the Vice President of Digital Workplace Services within Digital and Technology the candidate will be responsible for:

Technical Strategy & Depth

• Own the strategy architecture and roadmap for the productivity and collaboration stack inclusive of voice video meeting platforms and technologies (e.g. Microsoft 365 inclusive of Copilot / Google Workspace Teams / SharePoint Zoom Smartsheet Copilot Studio/Power Platform Adobe Creative Cloud/ Sign Email and SMTP Gateways).
• Maintain deep technical fluency across the breadth of the collaboration ecosystem messaging voice video/meeting platforms file storage/sharing intranet/portal technologies workflow/automation and AI-enabled productivity tools.
• Evaluate emerging technologies (including AI-powered productivity tools) and lead proof-of-concepts pilots and enterprise rollouts.
• Partner with security infrastructure and architecture teams to ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for security compliance scalability and reliability.
• Define and monitor technical standards integration patterns and governance frameworks across the collaboration portfolio.
• Coordinating team supporting M&A and divestment activities. This support includes initial impact assessments planning through to diligence and implementation of the technical integration aspects of the merger as they relate Productivity and Collaboration.

Leadership

• Manage a globally distributed team of engineers and service managers responsible for collaboration platforms and end-user productivity services providing leadership mentoring and direction to build a high-performing function.
• Set team vision priorities and OKRs; foster a culture of accountability innovation and continuous improvement.
• Develop team capability through coaching career planning and performance management while setting current and long-term objectives for the team.
• Act as a change leader driving adoption of new tools and ways of working across the organization.
• Represent the function in leadership forums contributing to broader IT and business strategy.
• Support the VP Digital Workplace Services in building and maintaining strong relationships with key business owners ensuring the department understands business requirements future demand and the impact on platform design and operations.
• Leads by example and encourages the team to maintain excellent visibility of industry wide trends and emerging technologies/vendors and ensures that the team understands and proposes developments to the benefit of Pearson

Financial & Budget Management

• Own the annual budget for the productivity and collaboration portfolio including licensing infrastructure and professional services costs.
• Drive cost optimization through license reclamation usage analysis and tiering/right-sizing of subscriptions.
• Build business cases and ROI models for new investments presenting to senior leadership and finance stakeholders.
• Forecast multi-year spend and manage cost variance reporting.

Contract & Vendor Management

• Lead negotiations renewals and lifecycle management of contracts with major vendors (e.g. Microsoft Google Zoom Smartsheet Adobe etc.).
• Manage vendor relationships and performance against SLAs driving accountability and value realization.
• Partner with Procurement and Legal to structure agreements that balance cost risk and flexibility.
• Reduce unit costs through effective ongoing vendor management. This includes understanding and presenting of alternative technology/vendor options

Stakeholder Management

• Serve as the primary point of contact for business units on productivity and collaboration needs translating business requirements into technical solutions.
• Build strong relationships with executive sponsors business unit leaders HR Legal Security and Finance.
• Communicate roadmap incidents and major changes clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Gather and act on user feedback to continuously improve the employee digital experience.

Desirable skills qualifications and experience:

• 5 years of progressive IT experience in collaboration digital workplace or end-user technology roles including Director-level responsibility in a workplace services position or leadership of a similarly scaled engineering function.
• 3 years in a people leadership role managing technical teams.
• Demonstrated deep and broad technical expertiseacross collaboration platforms (e.g. Microsoft 365 Google Workspace Slack Zoom SharePoint automation/workflow tools).
• Proven experience owning budgets forecasting and financial reportingfor a technology portfolio.
• Track record of leading vendor negotiations and contract managementfor enterprise software agreements.
• Strong stakeholder management skillswith experience presenting to and influencing senior executives.
• Excellent communication prioritization organizational and influencing skills.
• Experience in leading geographically dispersed teams
• Experience with AI-enabled productivity tools and driving enterprise adoption of new technologies.
• Relevant certifications e.g. Microsoft 365 Certified PMP ITIL Project Management
• Experience of leading technical input to significant ($15M) technology procurements
• Establishing and cultivating matrixed working relationship with all internal colleagues
• Demonstrable experience of driving unit cost reduction whilst maintaining platform performance and availability

What Success Looks Like

• A stable secure and modern collaboration environment with high employee satisfaction and adoption.
• Optimized technology spend with clear ROI and no unnecessary licensing waste.
• Strong well-managed vendor relationships with favourable contract terms.
• A motivated capable team with clear growth paths.
• Trusted partnerships across the business with productivity and collaboration seen as an enabler of strategic goals.