Head of IT - Pet

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Head of IT - Pet

Technology / Software Development

This isn't just an IT leadership role. It's an opportunity to transform an entire technology landscape, accelerate innovation through AI, and help define the future of Pet Insurance in a business that genuinely puts customers first.

Job Purpose

Provide end-to-end technology, product-aligned delivery, and operational leadership for the Pet Insurance value stream driving rapid, AI-enabled innovation while ensuring resilience, security, and scalability at scale.

Act as the accountable technology leader for the Pet domain, owning the full lifecycle from strategy through delivery and live operations. Enable high performing, cross functional value stream teams to deliver continuous customer and colleague value through modern engineering practices, automation and data driven decisioning.

Partner with senior leaders across Technology, Product, Data, and the Pet business to define and execute a clear, outcome focused technology strategy and roadmap. Leveraging AI, platform thinking, and reusable capabilities to accelerate time-to-market and optimise cost to serve in partnership with other technology teams.

Ensure platforms and services are always on, secure, compliant, and evolvable, with a strong focus on observability, service reliability, and continuous improvement. Embed a culture of ownership, experimentation, and rapid agile delivery, balancing innovation with robust controls expected in a regulated environment.

Accountabilities & Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Direction:

• Own and lead the Pet Technology Strategy, ensuring alignment to business priorities, digital experience ambitions, and enterprise architectural direction.
• Define and maintain a clear multi year roadmap
• Drive continuous modernisation and simplification of the Pet value stream technology landscape, actively reducing technical debt and legacy complexity while transitioning to modular, API-first, and cloud-native platforms. Enable scalable, future-ready capabilities that support rapid product evolution, AI integration, and accelerated time-to-market.

Pet Platform Ownership:

• Act as the accountable owner for all elements of the Pet IT landscape, across both directly managed, consumed internal services and third party.
• Ensure seamless interoperability across customer journeys, back‑end systems, data services and third party services.
• Govern platform health, performance, resilience, security, and operational excellence.

Delivery Leadership & Roadmap Execution:

• Oversee delivery within the Pet value streams, ensuring outcomes are achieved on time and with appropriate quality.
• Balance priorities across strategic transformation, regulatory programmes, operational improvements, and incremental enhancements.
• Work in partnership with Head of Pet Product as part of a two in the box Value Stream model.

Architecture, Engineering & Quality:

• Ensure all engineering and design decisions align to the broader architecture and technology roadmaps whilst actively helping to influencing and shape these.
• Ensure we deliver end‑to‑end, robust, scalable architectures.
• Champion high engineering standards, automation, DevOps maturity, secure-by-design principles, and consistent SDLC discipline.

Operational Management & Risk:

• Own the Pet technology risk posture, ensuring effective controls, monitoring, vulnerability management, and remediation.
• Govern incident, problem, change, and release processes across Pet end to end event when these are not directly sat with the Pet Tech team.
• Oversee third‑party and vendor relationships across Pet

Stakeholder Engagement & Leadership Influence:

• Act as the senior technology partner in conjunction with the overall Pet leadership team.
• Ensure transparent and proactive communication of technology plans, risks, opportunities, and constraints.
• Influence enterprise forums, driving alignment across Technology, Data, Product, Customer Operations, and Architecture.

People Leadership & Culture:

• Build and lead high‑performing engineering and operational teams.
• Promote a culture of innovation, autonomy, continuous improvement
• Foster collaboration across teams and tribes, ensuring capability uplift and effective knowledge‑sharing.

Knowledge & Experience Required:

• Significant leadership experience across Financial Services environment with exposure to both large customer-facing and backend technology environments.
• Strong understanding of modern platforms, cloud technologies, identity patterns, and API-first architecture.
• Experience leading digital transformation across complex ecosystems.
• Experience operating within regulated environments with strong risk management discipline.
• Expertise in multi‑disciplinary delivery models (internal engineering, external suppliers, hybrid squads).
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive strategic decisions.

Leadership Behaviours:

• Role models transparency, communication, and trust.
• Champions the four pillars of culture: Communication, Equality, Reward & Recognition, and Fun.
• Operates with strategic clarity while empowering teams.
• Drives a value‑led mindset with strong focus on delivery, customer outcomes, and continuous improvement.

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We’re proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits here.

Disability Confident Leader

As a Disability Confident Leader, for candidates with a disability or long-term health condition, that opt into the Disability Confident scheme, we’ll invite a fair and proportionate number of applicants that meet the essential requirements of the role to the first stage of our selection process.

If you need any adjustments or support with your application or during the recruitment process, just let us know. Please do email us. This is dedicated to supporting candidates that require reasonable adjustments or support during the application process.

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