Tech Lead Education Innovation

Are you an enthusiastic and ambitious innovator? And would you like to contribute to the development of new IT services for education? And do you want to explore new technologies and (further) develop our educational services? Are you also strongly focused on cooperation? Then we would like to talk to you!

Where you will work

SURF is the IT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research.

As Tech Lead Education Innovation, you will make an important contribution by applying your technical expertise to various innovative solutions for our members: the educational institutions. These solutions include international platforms to exchange data or solutions to properly apply XR in education.

The team you will join

You will work at the Innovation Core Team in the Education Logistics team. The core team focuses on innovation and it investigates how to apply advanced IT facilities for (new) services in education. The team works on themes such as internationalization, Study Data, XR in education and Digital testing. You work together with various people from inside and outside SURF. For example, you will work with the teams in SURF's Education Services department, which is responsible for services for flexible education and digital learning resources, offering services such as edubadges and edusources.

Those who work at SURF work at a unique and open organization. You notice this in everything: the structure of the organization, the set-up of the project teams, the culture at our offices and the mutual atmosphere. SURF offers excellent terms of employment and takes a flexible approach to work-life balance. At SURF, we like to work independently. You are also given the space and freedom to use and develop your talents to the best and broadest extent possible.

What you will do

As Tech Lead, you will work with others to develop new education services and capabilities. Examples include a platform for educational applications, an infrastructure for study data and a gateway for educational data exchange. You do not have ultimate responsibility, but you are responsible for creating and assessing solution architectures across the chain. You also guarantee privacy and security and are responsible for software development. Specifically, you usually work on up to three projects simultaneously. You support your colleagues as a sparring partner in the development of new solutions and, for example, examine what is needed to get a new service online.

What else you are involved in:

• You design, develop and realize systems, applications and services for our members;
• You formulate the architecture and technical requirements for these services and manage developers. You also look at the reusability of existing solutions and (inter)national examples;
• You follow, explore and initiate new (technological) developments and (open) standards and contribute to the creation of new internal and (inter)national standards;
• You will work closely with colleagues who work as, for example, architects, technical product managers or product managers at SURF. You will coordinate with them on a joint educational infrastructure and general guidelines for open source development, privacy and security;
• You will work closely with related projects in the national Npuls programme, which focuses on digitization for the whole of education within senior secondary vocational, higher vocational and university education.

Your skills and experience

In addition, you have:

• You have a broad interest and knowledge in IT and innovation topics. You translate functional needs into technical solutions that you realize together with developers, architects, product managers and other specialists.
• You can empathize with the process, the maker and the customer. You do so with full-stack technical insight and a creative eye. Through your contribution, you and your colleagues will drive innovation in secondary and higher education!
• You have hbo/wo working and thinking level;
• You have at least 5 years of relevant work experience;
• You have experience with (open source) software development and development methodologies;
• You have experience in creating and defending solution architectures;
• You have experience with the operational management of services in a Linux environment;
• You have knowledge of and experience with privacy by design and security by design;
• It is an advantage if you know the main concepts, protocols and standards in use within MBO and higher education.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.