Head of Enterprise Applications
About Designer Group
Designer Group is a leading international mechanical and electrical contractor delivering specialist services, products, and integrated solutions across the Data Centre, Industrial, Power & Energy, Life Sciences and Commercial sectors. With operations across Ireland, the UK and Mainland Europe, Designer Group delivers complex engineering projects for some of the world's leading organisations. Our success is driven by our people, innovation, technical expertise and commitment to delivering excellence for our clients.
Head of Enterprise Applications
Role Overview
Designer Group is investing significantly in digital transformation, enterprise technology, data and AI capabilities to support continued growth across our business. The Head of Enterprise Applications will play a pivotal leadership role in shaping and delivering this vision.
Reporting to the CTO, this position combines ownership of the enterprise applications landscape, enterprise and domain architecture leadership, integration strategy, and management of the data team. The successful candidate will work closely with senior stakeholders across the business to build a connected technology ecosystem where data is captured once, managed effectively, and leveraged to drive operational excellence, reporting, analytics and AI-enabled decision making.
This is a unique opportunity for an experienced technology leader who enjoys balancing strategic architecture and leadership responsibilities with hands-on technical involvement.
Key Responsibilities
Enterprise Applications Leadership
- Act as the IT owner for Designer Group's core enterprise application estate.
- Partner with business owners across all functions to maximise value from enterprise systems.
- Ensure robust governance across support, change management, access management, continuity planning and service performance.
- Lead application selection processes, business case development and vendor evaluations.
- Manage relationships with software vendors and implementation partners, including contracts, licensing, SLAs and renewals.
- Drive application adoption and process standardisation across business units and geographical regions.
- Manage application-related budgets and investment plans.
Enterprise & Domain Architecture
- Define and maintain the enterprise architecture strategy, architecture principles and technology roadmap.
- Establish target-state architecture aligned to business objectives.
- Provide architecture leadership across CRM, ERP, Finance, Procurement, HRIS, Payroll, Time & Attendance and project-related systems.
- Maintain the enterprise application portfolio, identifying opportunities to consolidate, replace or retire applications.
- Define systems of record, data ownership structures and master data management principles.
- Review and approve solution designs, data flows and integration architectures.
- Establish and chair Design Authority forums governing technology decisions.
- Ensure alignment with cyber security, GDPR and EU AI Act requirements.
Integration Strategy & Delivery
- Lead the development and implementation of the enterprise integration roadmap.
- Define integration standards and patterns including APIs, middleware, event-driven integrations and file-based exchanges.
- Participate directly in the design, troubleshooting and optimisation of integrations.
- Ensure integration monitoring, alerting, resilience and recovery capabilities are implemented.
- Collaborate with internal teams and external partners to deliver scalable integration solutions.
Data Team Leadership
- Lead, mentor and develop the data team.
- Establish clear objectives, performance expectations and development plans.
- Promote best practice in data engineering, modelling, governance and reporting.
- Own the data platform and reporting roadmap.
- Build a governed data ecosystem that supports reporting, analytics and future AI initiatives.
- Develop and maintain data governance frameworks including ownership, quality standards, access controls and data catalogues.
- Prioritise reporting and analytics demand to deliver reusable data products and trusted business insights.
- Support future team growth through workforce planning and capability development.
Delivery Excellence & Business Transformation
- Lead application, data and integration projects using agile and product-led methodologies.
- Introduce and embed modern delivery practices including backlog management, DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing and release management.
- Ensure enterprise systems and data platforms are AI-ready and capable of supporting emerging business use cases.
- Act as a trusted adviser to senior leadership, translating technical concepts into clear business outcomes.
- Work closely with IT, Cyber Security and Business Transformation teams to ensure alignment across all technology initiatives.
Experience & Qualifications
Essential Requirements
- Minimum 10 years' experience in enterprise applications, architecture, integration and data environments.
- At least 3 years in a senior leadership or ownership role.
- Demonstrated experience defining enterprise architecture strategies, roadmaps and target operating models.
- Hands-on experience across enterprise platforms including ERP, Finance, CRM, HRIS, Payroll and Procurement systems.
- Strong understanding of enterprise integration technologies, APIs, middleware and event-based architectures.
- Proven people leadership and team development experience.
- Strong understanding of agile delivery methodologies, DevOps practices and SaaS environments.
- Vendor and supplier management experience including contract negotiation, SLAs and commercial oversight.
- Ability to operate effectively at both strategic and technical levels.
- Excellent stakeholder management, communication and influencing skills.
- Practical experience leveraging AI tools and technologies to improve productivity, automation, analysis and decision making.
- Eligibility to work in Ireland, the UK or an EU member state.
Desirable Requirements
- Experience within Construction, Engineering, MEP, Infrastructure or project-based organisations.
- Knowledge of construction technology platforms such as BIM, Procore, Common Data Environments (CDEs) and Primavera P6.
- Experience within the Microsoft technology ecosystem including:
- Software development or low-code application development experience.
- Experience designing or implementing Data Mesh architectures.
- Professional certifications such as:
- Experience supporting distributed or multinational organisations.
- Knowledge of GDPR, EU AI Act and ISO 27001 standards.
Personal Attributes
- Strategic thinker with strong hands-on technical capability.
- Pragmatic and commercially minded.
- Passionate about developing people and building high-performing teams.
- Collaborative approach with strong stakeholder engagement skills.
- Highly organised, accountable and delivery focused.
- Curious and innovative, with a strong interest in emerging technologies, data and AI.
What Success Looks Like
First 30 Days
- Complete assessment of the enterprise application and data landscape.
- Identify immediate improvement opportunities and quick wins.
- Build relationships with key business and technology stakeholders.
Within 3 Months
- Establish enterprise architecture roadmap and target-state vision.
- Define master data ownership and governance structures.
- Identify systems of record across the application estate.
- Launch Design Authority governance process.
Within 12 Months
- Deliver priority integrations through a scalable integration platform.
- Implement a governed enterprise data platform supporting trusted reporting and analytics.
- Reduce duplicate data entry and manual reporting processes.
- Establish a high-performing data team with clear standards, governance and development pathways.
Why Join Designer Group?
This is an exciting opportunity to shape the future technology, data and AI strategy of a growing international engineering business. You will have the opportunity to influence executive decision-making, modernise a complex application landscape, build high-performing teams and create the digital foundations that will support Designer Group's next phase of growth.
Designer Group is an Equal Opportunities Employer. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified candidates. We know that strong candidates may not meet every requirement listed. If this role excites you and you meet many of the essential criteria, we encourage you to apply.