Please note this vacancy is only open to current University of Glasgow employees.

Job Purpose

Working as part of our established Systems Support & Development Team, to lead and support the design, development, and delivery of our planning analytics solutions within Finance. Reporting to the ERP Systems Manager, work closely with existing Cognos Analytics technical resource to provide extensive support and expertise in the design and delivery of our business intelligence initiatives.

This is a key development and application support role producing a wide range of visualisations, modelling and analytical solutions to support strategic decision-making in the University.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

1. Technical resource working with external partners as a member of a cross-college Planning Analytics project team, responsible for designing, implementing and managing FP&A solutions. In addition to supporting live Cashflow and Student Number Planning workstreams.

2. Analyse business requirements, current business processes and future needs to develop appropriate technical solutions to meet business needs applying professional judgement to select the best solution and configure applications to deploy the resulting service design.

3. Working to deadlines design, develop and test new systems, producing detailed design specifications and documentation, and ensuring at all stages that the system delivered will meet user requirements and expectations.

4. Build relationships with key staff within central finance and colleges to understand ongoing developments, decisions and priorities as well as where further support is required.

5. Additionally, assist the wider team with Infrastructure and application design, maintenance, and support taking responsibility for on-going operations and continuous service improvement.

6. Utilising expert knowledge, design and implement complex ETL and Data Integration processes, using appropriate technologies to ensure planning solutions and related dependencies operate effectively and available to end-users.

7. Implement and support business information solutions, including the preparation and delivery of user training and familiarisation sessions for new and existing systems. Create and maintain associated user documentation and provide support via the helpdesk.

8. Act as lead on behalf of Systems team in a project team with a university-wide membership; advise on appropriate business and technical solutions using expertise knowledge to support and enhance the solutions to ensure they are consistently available and meet the evolving needs of users.

9. Proactively manage complex escalated calls from first and second line, providing a fast response.

10. Ensure continued engagement with new and existing business intelligence technologies and keep skills up to date with industry and best practice. Learn, manage, and use existing and new technologies as they are introduced to further enhance analytics capabilities.

Knowledge, Qualifications, Skills and Experience

Knowledge/Qualifications

Essential:

A1 Educated to degree level equivalent, including being professionally qualified in relevant discipline, such as IT, Engineering or Business Systems, with a broad range of professional experience in a similar role(s).

A2 Authoritative detailed knowledge of the principles of delivering business solutions to a range of business users.

A3 Authoritative detailed knowledge of systems design: using design tools to specify complex systems comprising technologies such as RDBMS, Web development tools, security modules.

A4 Authoritative detailed knowledge of RDBMS: Oracle, SQL, PL/SQL.

A5 Authoritative detailed knowledge of REST API and cloud integration software e.g. Boomi.

A6 Authoritative detailed knowledge of data modelling approaches.

Desirable:

B1 Authoritative detailed knowledge of OLAP Financial Planning and Analysis tools e.g. IBMPlanning Analytics.

B2 Knowledge of other Business Intelligence platforms e.g. Cognos, Tableau, Power BI.

B3 IBM Planning Analytics development experience e.g. Turbo Integrator, MDX, Rules & Feeders.

B4 Knowledge of ETL platforms e.g. Alteryx, ODI.

B5 Knowledge of business tools: MS Visio, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps, Miro/Mural.

B6 Knowledge of Agile Software development lifecycles.

B7 Knowledge of modern data ecosystems.

B8 Knowledge of Windows Server.

B9 Working knowledge of languages e.g. JavaScript, Java, Python.

B10 Awareness of the Higher Education environment.

B11 Good understanding of the fundamental stages of the delivery lifecycle of BI solutions including ETL and data cleansing skills, data modelling and architecture design.

B12 An excellent understanding of agile project methodologies.

Skills

Essential:

C1 Excellent analytical and problem solving skills.

C2 Ability to work within and contribute to a dynamic team including external partners e.g. consultants and vendors.

C3 Ability to acquire complex technical knowledge in a rapid and ever-changing environment.

C4 Ability to interact positively with a variety of users with differing IT knowledge.

C5 Ability to work under pressure.

C6 Ability to apply excellent analytical insight to analyse complex technical issues to identify root cause and propose frequently unique solutions.

C7 Ability to work to timescales with competing demands.

C8 Drive, enthusiasm, and a high degree of personal effectiveness.

C9 Ability to communicate effectively with staff with different IT competency and convey complex IT issues in a non-technical language.

C10 Good interpersonal skills.

Experience

Essential:

E1 Extensive experience in delivering or participating in data integration projects participating in all stages of the development life cycle with qualifications above. This experience should have been gained using the technologies as specified in the ‘Knowledge/Qualifications’ section above.

E2 Experience of using in-depth technical knowledge of Business Intelligence technologies to identity options for improvement and influence strategy decisions accordingly.

E3 Project and/or people management skills gained through previous experience.

E4 Experience of managing the activities of self and/or others.

Desirable:

F1 Experience of support and development of corporate business information systems.

Terms and Conditions

Salary will be Grade 8, £50,253 - £58,225 per annum.

This post is full time (35 hours p/w) and fixed term for up to 2 years.

Closing date: 14 August 2025.

The University of Glasgow has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK. If you require a Skilled Worker visa to work in the UK, you will be required to meet the eligibility requirements of the visa route to be assigned a Certificate of Sponsorship.
Please note that this post may be eligible to be sponsored under the Skilled Worker visa route if tradeable points can be used under the Skilled Worker visa rules. For more information please visit: https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa.

As a valued member of our team, you can expect:

1 A warm welcoming and engaging organisational culture, where your talents are developed and nurtured, and success is celebrated and shared.

2 An excellent employment package with generous terms and conditions including 41 days of leave for full time staff, pension - pensions handbook https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/payandpensions/pensions/, benefits and discount packages.

3 A flexible approach to working.

4 A commitment to support your health and wellbeing, including a free 6-month UofG Sport membership for all new staff joining the University  https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/staff/healthwellbeing/.

We believe that we can only reach our full potential through the talents of all. Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our values. Applications are particularly welcome from across our communities and in particular people from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, and other protected characteristics who are under-represented within the University. Read more on how the University promotes and embeds all aspects of equality and diversity within our community https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/humanresources/equalitydiversity/.

We endorse the principles of Athena Swan https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/humanresources/equalitydiversity/athenaswan/ and hold bronze, silver and gold awards across the University.

We are investing in our organisation, and we will invest in you too. Please visit our website https://www.gla.ac.uk/explore/jobs/ for more information.