IT Business Partner, Founders Forum
Monday-Thursday in Office
4 days a week in office
Community for entrepreneurs & start up investments
Be an early applicant
Community for entrepreneurs & start up investments
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
Monday-Thursday in Office
4 days a week in office
21-100 employees
Company mission
To champion innovators and drive outcomes that leave a positive impact on our world.
Role
Who you are
- Experience with IT operations, IT management, business systems or technical project management is preferable, ideally in a start-up or scale-up where you have been hands on
- Proven track record managing outsourced providers and vendors, including contracts, service levels and commercial negotiation
- Strong project management capability, with experience running multiple projects at once and picking up programmes already in flight
- Experience of a CRM or marketing automation migration, ideally including data migration, integration build and driving adoption after go live
- Demonstrable ownership of an IT or SaaS budget, with a clear understanding of licensing models and where cost is actually saved
- Practical experience of information security and data protection in a commercial setting, including access control, security questionnaires and GDPR obligations
- Confident administering and integrating a modern SaaS stack. Our environment includes Google Workspace, a CRM and marketing automation platform, Airtable, Notion, Asana, Slack, Xero, Stripe, BambooHR and a range of event and prospecting tools
- Comfortable with integration and automation concepts, APIs and no-code or low-code tooling, without needing to write production code
- Experience setting up IT for a new entity, office or business line from a standing start
- Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to explain technical matters to non-technical stakeholders and business needs to technical suppliers
- Ambition and strategic vision
- A positive, can-do attitude
- Strong analytical and problem solving skills, including the ability to define options, foresee issues and drive them to closure
- Strong commercial awareness, with instinct for where money and risk sit
- Excellent stakeholder management, with the credibility to hold suppliers to account and the patience to support colleagues at every level of technical confidence
- Exceptional organisational skills and attention to detail, with the ability to manage multiple competing priorities without compromising quality
- A structured, methodical approach to complex technical problems
- Discretion and sound judgement when handling sensitive data
- Resilience, flexibility, and the ability to work autonomously
What the job involves
- The IT Business Partner will own the day to day running of our technology stack across Founders Forum Group
- You will be the single point of contact between the business and our outsourced IT partner, own the group software estate and its budget, lead us towards recognised security accreditation, and stand up the technology needed for new ventures and opportunities as they launch
- You will work alongside our CTO, Data Manager and our AI & Product Associate, and partner closely with the CFO on cost and control
- This is a hands-on, delivery-focused role in a fast-paced multi-entity group. It calls for strong project management, confident vendor and stakeholder management, and enough technical fluency to challenge suppliers and translate business needs into technical requirements. You will not be expected to write code or design architecture
- The role is an individual contributor with no current direct reports. You will instead work across cross functional teams, drawing in colleagues, external specialists and our retained providers to deliver, and influencing without formal authority
- Act as the main point of contact with our outsourced IT provider (BCT) and other technology suppliers, running regular service reviews and holding them to agreed service levels
- Manage the wider technology supplier base, including implementation partners, hosting providers and specialist consultants. This includes maintaining a single register of every IT and SaaS tool in use, including owner, cost, renewal date and a RAG status for review and approval
- Project manage technology initiatives end to end, including our current CRM and marketing automation migration to Attio and Braze
- Own contract renewals, negotiations and consolidation opportunities across the technology estate, with sign-off from the CFO
- Manage joiner, mover and leaver access across systems, keeping licence counts accurate as people join and leave
- Support platform administration for core systems, including our CRM and marketing automation platforms, working with the Data Manager on anything touching data or reporting
- Spot duplication and consolidation opportunities to reduce tool count and cost
- Support the CFO on the annual IT budget, rolling forecast and monthly reporting, keeping a forward view of renewals and licence changes
- Build simple business cases for technology investment, covering cost, benefit and risk
- Act as the first point of contact for team leads across the group on day to day technology needs, tracking measures like spend and licence utilisation
- Act as the team's day to day point of contact for information security queries, escalating to the CTO where judgement calls are needed
- Coordinate client, partner and tender security questionnaires, and data protection requests such as the privacy inbox and subject access requests, tracking deadlines while the CTO/DPO and legal advisers own the substantive content
- Help run security awareness training and onboarding for the team
- In the first 12 months you'll:
- Help us land the CRM and marketing automation migration to Attio and Braze and take it into business as usual through structured project management
- Build the group technology register from a standing start, covering every tool, owner, licence count, renewal date, cost and data held, with a RAG status for review and approval
- Establish the BCT service relationship, including a regular service review and a clear escalation route
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Founders Forum started in 2005 to create an optimised environment for collaboration. The community was established as a response to the lack of credible, peer-to-peer European entrepreneur networks to rival those that existed in Silicon Valley.
Founders Forum hosts invite-only, not-for-profit forums to accelerate the positive impact of technology on the world. The company organises two flagship forums annually, as well as numerous smaller events globally, assembling a global community of founders, global leaders, senior investors and rising stars.
Founders Forum has also launched a family of businesses that exist to support entrepreneurs at all stages of their journey, covering advisory, executive search, education, diversity & inclusion, charitable giving and various others. The company remains committed to developing the future of industries, discovering and unearthing the latest trends in technology, and promoting avenues to create a positive impact on society.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Company benefits
- Access to the Founders Family network of businesses and wider tech ecosystem
- 26 days annual leave, with the option to work remotely abroad for up to 2 weeks/year
- Wellbeing budget via Juno
- Learning and development budget
- Private healthcare insurance (Bupa)
- Join an ambitious and passionate team with quarterly socials and team lunches 1/week
- Great new office at 180 Strand, London
Company values
- Collaborators - We believe in the power of the network. We facilitate connections, learn from experts and inspire each other to continuously reach the next level
- Innovators - We are constantly thinking about new opportunities to support the innovators that make up our community. We are innovators ourselves, building new solutions and harnessing new technologies to deliver greater value
- Pioneers - We are bold in our approach to a changing world, taking pride in doing things differently. Our success reflects the specialist expertise drawn from the community and shared entrepreneurial spirit to pioneer the future of digital
- Driven by impact - We are here to make a big impact on the world. The people we work with are highly aspirational. and we harness the potential by creating an ecosystem where they can push themselves to the limit
Company HQ
London, UK
Leadership
Brent Hoberman
(Co-Founder & Executive Chairman)Founders Forum, Brent is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Founders Forum, Founders Factory and firstminute capital. Previously, Brent co-founded lastminute.com in 1998, Made.com and Karakuri.
Jonathan Goodwin OBE
(Co-Founder)Jonathan has previously founded PROFounders Capital and worked as the European Senior Advisor for Opera Solutions. Since creating Founders Forum, they have also founded Lepe Partners and are the current Head of Merchant Banking at Alvarium.
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