Head of IT Development

A place to drive change

Location: Bradford, Hybrid (2 3 days in the office, with travel as required for meetings and training)
Salary: circa £77,405 per annum, plus essential car user allowance of £1,250
Contract type: Permanent
Hours: 35 hours per week, Monday Friday, 9am 5pm

Thousands of families depend on us for safe, sustainable and affordable homes. As we continue to transform our services and modernise how we work, technology is becoming central to how we deliver for our customers.

It s this belief that everyone deserves a place to call home that drives everything we do. Together, we re innovating, improving, and finding new ways to support our customers and colleagues.

If you re looking for a career that creates real impact and supports meaningful change, this is the place to be.

About the role

Lead, innovate and shape our digital future.

We are investing in technology like never before. To support this transformation, we re looking for a visionary and hands-on Head of IT Development to lead the teams who design, build and assure the digital services our colleagues and customers rely on every day.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives at the intersection of strategy and delivery: you ll architect modern Azure-based platforms, lead talented development and testing teams, and champion engineering practices that raise quality, improve performance, and accelerate delivery.

This isn t just a technical leadership position it's an opportunity to shape the technology landscape of an organisation with a genuine social purpose.

Salary
The spot salary for this position is £77,405 per annum for applicants who fully meet the requirements.
Applicants who are still developing some skills may start at 5% or 10% below the spot salary, with clear support to progress to the full amount.

About you

• Extensive experience with the Microsoft tech stack and ideally Azure cloud environments.
• Strong grounding in modern engineering practices API-first, microservices, DevOps, CI/CD and resilient architectures.
• Proven ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on technical understanding.
• Strong leadership skills, with experience supporting multidisciplinary and partner teams to perform at their best.
• A passion for agile delivery, continuous improvement and embedding robust quality throughout development.
• Experience aligning development and testing activities with organisational goals and technology strategy.
• Solid architecture understanding and confidence overseeing solution design.
• Experience assuring output quality from internal and augmented development/testing teams.
• Excellent communication, influencing and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience defining meaningful KPIs and reporting on team performance.
• Experience managing external vendors and ensuring alignment with internal standards.

A place to build a future

We ve got big ambitions and we re looking for people who want to grow with us. You ll have opportunities to learn new skills, shape your career direction and contribute to a collaborative, supportive environment.

What you ll receive:

• Generous time off: 28 days holiday plus bank holidays, your birthday off, and the option to buy more.
• Health & wellbeing: Cash health plan, Health MOTs, online GP, gym discounts, and a volunteer day for a cause you care about.
• Financial perks: Car leasing options, salary sacrifice benefits and exclusive discount schemes.
• Future security: Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit pension options, plus life assurance at three times your salary.
• Family-friendly policies: Enhanced parental leave and flexible working options.
• Career development: Leadership training, apprenticeships, internal programmes and more.

This is more than a job it s a place to make an impact, be valued, and build a meaningful future.

We re committed to inclusion

We believe diversity makes us stronger and we re committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels respected and able to thrive.

If you need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, just let us know we ll make it happen.

Please note: Candidates must have current eligibility to live and work in the UK. Accent does not currently hold a sponsorship licence.

If you want a place where you can make a positive difference to society, to our organisation and to your future apply now.

Recruitment Agencies: We work exclusively with partners on our PSL and do not accept speculative approaches.

You may have experience of the following: Head of IT Development, IT Leadership, Software Development Manager, Azure Architecture, Microsoft Tech Stack, Cloud-Native Development, API-First, Microservices, DevOps, CI/CD, Modern Engineering Practices, Quality Assurance, Test Automation, SDLC, Digital Transformation, IT Strategy, Technical Leadership, Engineering Manager, Solution Architecture, Agile Delivery, Progressive Delivery, Infrastructure-as-Code, Event-Driven Architecture, Systems Integration, Stakeholder Management, Vendor Management, Technology Innovation, etc.

REF-