IT Applications Lead

Why we're hiring:

At WPP, technology is at the heart of everything we do, and it is WPP IT’s mission to enable everyone to collaborate, create and thrive. WPP IT is undergoing a significant transformation to modernise ways of working, shift to cloud and micro-service-based architectures, drive automation, digitise colleague and client experiences and deliver insight from WPP’s petabytes of data.

GroupM is the world’s leading media investment company responsible for more than $63B in annual media investment through agencies Mindshare, MediaCom, Wavemaker, Essence and m/SIX, as well as the outcomes-driven programmatic audience company, Xaxis and data and technology company Choreograph. GroupM’s portfolio includes Data & Technology, Investment and Services, all united in a vision to shape the next era of media where advertising works better for people. By leveraging all the benefits of scale, the company innovates, differentiates and generates sustained value for our clients wherever they do business.

The GroupM IT team in WPP IT are the technology solutions partner for the GroupM group of agencies and are accountable for co-ordinating and assuring end-to-end change delivery, managing the GroupM IT technology life-cycle and innovation pipeline.

This position will be a member of the Local Systems Team for North America, focusing on business-facing and technical support activities primarily for media and investment applications. Responsibilities include implementing, testing, supporting, and maintaining applications within the program. Additionally, this role will involve leading a team of developers and support analysts and acting as a liaison between the business stakeholders and the development team.

This will include: 

• Leading and guiding the team of developers and support analysts,
• Promoting and championing the applications in the region, 
• Gathering user requirements for the service and project team,
• Performing root cause analysis where needed on various products,
• Providing help, documentation and training for new releases and/or products,
• Actively participating in user acceptance testing, 
• Building end user training materials, 
• Leading end user training sessions, 
• Assisting teams throughout the implementation process, 
• Contributing to the end user support portal

What you'll be doing:

• Responsible for oversight of their team’s projects and activities.
• Provides coaching and mentorship to team members to enhance capabilities and development.
• Responsible for in-depth knowledge of assigned software, technologies, and functions, serving as a liaison between program managers users and developers.
• Maintain strategic and tactical relationships both internally within the developers, program managers and even externally with business stakeholders.
• Help the team meet and exceed the support goals.
• Monitors and communicates team progress to the necessary stakeholders.
• Simultaneously supports the entire project management cycle of multiple projects.
• Focuses on the importance of reporting, meeting stated deadline commitments, and communication to stakeholders.
• Work with project teams throughout the implementation process of new sites, applications, or dashboards; advise on best practices, create support guide documents, client guidelines, provide training and regular follow-ups. 
• Use and leverage PowerApps, PowerBI, Power Automate, SharePoint Online and other related Office 365 services to build and support business solutions.
• Become an expert end user of the applications within the programme, including media and investment applications and apps built using PowerApps, Power Automate, PowerBI and SharePoint Online. Develop in-depth and comprehensive knowledge of the functionality available, champion the products in the region.
• Attempt to analyse the cause of all problems and either provide the End Users with a solution, workaround, or escalate the issue to global support.
• Verify, manage, track and regularly communicate the status of issues reported between the user base in the region and the support team.
• Conduct basic and advanced hands-on training sessions for end users and be the primary point of contact in the region; providing daily support, troubleshooting, configuration, installation and Super User training for Client Reporting Applications.
• Actively participate in the evaluation and testing of new releases. Also work to engage and guide business users to test new releases of applications within the program.
• Provide support for new releases and communicate new release information to the user base, providing training and end user documentation on new features. 
• Assist in building end user training materials (syllabus, handouts, FAQ’s, guides etc.) and regularly update end user documents, drawing on user feedback for the appropriate applications.
• Other ad hoc duties.

Who you'll be working with:

The IT Applications Lead will report to the North America Lead for Local Systems.

What you'll need:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in a similar role involving leading teams and providing support for business applications.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or other technical field is highly preferred.
• Experience with project management methodologies such as agile, waterfall, or hybrid.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and manage projects with some degree of autonomy under guidance.
• Hands-on experience providing technical support for IT applications, troubleshooting issues, and resolving user inquiries.
• Experience assisting in managing and coordinating IT application projects throughout their lifecycle.
• Strong interpersonal skills and a collaborative mindset to work with team members and stakeholders.
• Excellent communication skills to understand and convey business requirements and technical concepts.
• Some experience with vendor management and third-party software integrations.

Who you are:

You're open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are accepting: of new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures or our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with conviction: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: We are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we'll give you:

Passionate, inspired people – We promote a culture of people that do extraordinary work.

Scale and opportunity – We offer the opportunity to create, influence and complete projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.

Challenging and stimulating work – Unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers. Are you up for the challenge?