Applications Director | Salesforce, Workday & Microsoft 365/Azure
📍 Hybrid | London (2 days a week in office)
💰 £800-£900 per day (Outside IR35)
We're partnering with a global organisation undergoing a major digital transformation programme and are seeking a Director of Applications to lead the strategy, engineering excellence, and operational management of a complex enterprise applications landscape.
This is a newly created leadership role reporting directly to the CTO, offering the opportunity to shape the future of business-critical platforms, modern engineering practices, and AI-enabled operations across a global organisation
The Opportunity
You'll be responsible for the availability, performance, governance, and evolution of a portfolio of strategic enterprise platforms, while leading a team of platform specialists, technical leads, and engineers.
This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on ownership of platform roadmaps, engineering standards, cloud operations, and AI platform governance.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the strategy, roadmap, and ongoing evolution of enterprise applications platforms
- Build and develop a Platform Centre of Excellence, driving governance, standards, and best practice
- Own engineering excellence across CI/CD, release management, source control, automated testing, and environment management
- Lead platform teams responsible for Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft 365, Azure, and wider SaaS technologies
- Establish engineering standards, architectural patterns, and Infrastructure as Code practices
- Oversee AI platform operations, governance, adoption, and optimisation
- Partner closely with Architecture, Security, Data, and Transformation teams to deliver business outcomes
What We're Looking For
- Significant experience leading enterprise application functions within a global organisation
- Deep expertise across at least two of the following: Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft 365 / Azure, AWS
- Proven track record building and leading Centres of Excellence
- Strong background in SaaS platforms, cloud technologies, and enterprise-scale application operations
- Experience implementing modern engineering practices including CI/CD, DevOps, release management, and automated testing
- Knowledge of AI platforms, generative AI, or agent-based technologies would be highly advantageous
- Experience managing technical leaders, architects, and platform specialists
- Ability to engage and influence executive stakeholders and operate at board level