Application and Infrastructure Specialist

The Role and Department

The Computing and Information Services (CIS) has an annual operational budget in the order of £10m, multi-million pound programmes of change within year, and approximately 185 staff. The Senior Leadership Team report directly to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) with the following portfolios: Strategy and Change; Operations; and Information Systems. CIS provide academi c, teaching and administrative services across the organisation that underpin the day-to-day activities of the whole organisation.

The purpose of the role is to support and enable University staff and students to use their IT effectively in teaching, research and operations. As a member of the Computing and Information Services (CIS) Service Desk team the post holder will be expected to provide effective and customer focused support to all users of University IT in a timely and professional manner.

It requires a passion for customer service delivery, problem solving and communication skill and a high level of IT knowledge.

You will be expected to show leadership skills where appropriate. This may include technical, team and project leadership or the drive to implement a proposed service improvement.

You will be working very closely with all teams across Computing and Information Services supporting professional support services, Durham University students, academic departments, and research institutes.

Delivering specialist services as an expert technologist with a good understanding of operating systems including Windows, Mac, Linux and network technologies.

Proactively working with 1st, 2nd and 3rd line CIS colleagues to investigate, triage and implement solutions, whilst identifying trends and persistent incidents. As required, provide management for the delivery of high-quality IT infrastructure and application support across the University.

Promote and foster positive and highly collaborative approaches to problem solving and incident prevention whilst motivating, mentoring, and coaching team members. Creating and maintaining internal service documentation, liaising with relevant service owners where appropriate ensuring accuracy. This includes the development of FAQs, collating existing support documentation and providing training where necessary.

Being a point of contact for the IT service desk and the wider department to interpret, analyse and resolve complex infrastructure, application, and technical information. Contribute to the design and development of intelligent applications, AI solutions and innovation within the service desk function. Take responsibility for monitoring and updating risk assessments and safety procedures, including cyber security for the service, providing guidance to others where necessary and promoting best practice within the team and wider university.

From early 2025 the base location for this role will change from our Durham City Centre site to our exciting new professional services hub based at Boldon House. Boldon House is situated on the outskirts of Durham near the Arnison Centre in Pity Me. Boldon House will bring a number of professional services teams together in a vibrant office environment which supports collaborative working and is designed to embrace hybrid working. To find out more about this project, please visit this webpage: Boldon House – Durham University

Further information about the role and the responsibilities is at the bottom of this job description.

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