IT Business Partner

Founders Forum Group is an event-powered community and family of businesses supporting innovative entrepreneurs at every stage of their journeys. Founded in 2005, our invite-only forums unite founders, investors, corporate and government leaders to tackle era-defining questions in iconic locations across the globe. Since 2019, Founders Forum has partnered with Informa Tech to celebrate the strength and diversity of UK tech through London Tech Week

In 2023, Founders Forum acquired Tech Nation. The transfer has seen FF Group continue to execute against Tech Nation's mission to empower tech entrepreneurs, scale innovative startups, and provide a united platform for UK tech founders.

Founders Forum Group's Values

- Community first: More than just fellow founders. Everything we offer is centred around the founders we work alongside.
- Entrepreneurial to our core: Preserving our startup mentality is the key to being able to empathise with and fully support our growing community.
- Founding the future: We are forward thinkers. Always at the forefront of innovation.
- Excellence without ego: We don't take ourselves too seriously, but are proud of what we do. We work together, recognising the expertise of those around us, and understand the value in differing points of view. We are committed to excellence and always hold ourselves to the highest standard.

The Opportunity

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.

Responsibilities

IT partner and vendor management

- 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

Information security and compliance

- 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

Requirements

Experience and qualifications

- 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

This role is for you if you have:

- 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

Benefits

We offer a range of flexible, discretionary benefits to our team. These currently include:

- 25 days contractual annual leave
- Enhanced discretionary leave provision, including an additional day off for your birthday and leave between Christmas and New Years Day
- The option to work remotely anywhere in the world for 3 weeks/year (1 week at Easter and 2 weeks during July and August)
- AXA Health insurance, with the option to add dependents
- Life Insurance
- Medicash access including online GP access and mental health support
- Employee Assistance Program
- Competitive pension provision
- Perkbox membership with generous monthly allocation of points for day to day purchases
- Learning and development annual allowance
- Cycle to work scheme
- Lunch 1x/week, office snacks, and regular team drinks
- Quarterly team activities and annual team trip/day out
- Access to the Founders Forum Group network of businesses and wider tech ecosystem

We currently have a working pattern of Monday-Thursday in Office and Fridays remote.