All Things Urban

The new Connected Places Catapult accelerates smarter living and travelling in and between the places of tomorrow. We focus on growing businesses with innovations in mobility services and the built environment that enable new levels of physical, digital and social connectedness. The Connected Places Catapult operates at the intersection between public and private sectors and between local government and transport authorities. We convene the disparate parts of the market to help innovators navigate the complexity of doing business, creating new commercial opportunities and improving productivity, socio-economic and environmental benefits for places.

We’re looking for a paternity leave cover for our Urban Technology Team Lead. The Urban Technology team is a multidisciplinary team of technologists, service designers and researchers. The team plays an important role in enabling the Connected Places Catapult (CPC) to successfully meet its strategic objectives to build the economy and develop businesses to service the advanced urban services and intelligent mobility sectors. The Urban Technology Team works across a diverse project portfolio and technology areas in support of domains like the built environment, wellbeing, public space, critical infrastructure, mobility and decision-making institutions.

Ideas need to be tested and proved to ensure they become a reality – this role makes this happen: prototyping, testing, creating and running pilot projects, demonstration at various scales and supporting organisations and companies understand their ideas in a real-world context is the core of the role and the function of the Urban Technology team. The Team Lead role combines development and delivery with line management responsibility. We expect you to lead our expertise in technology, piloting and demonstration programmes.

You will develop our ability to deliver testing and demonstration work using real city environments, finding new collaborative ways to work with cities, companies and citizens. Development work is done in our real-life projects: we expect the Team Lead to work at least 60% of their time in our internal and external projects. As a Team Lead you will work in close collaboration with the Applied Data & Technology Programme Director, and other Team Leads in the company, and be also the go-to person for, prototyping practical testing applications and represent technological competence for the Catapult as a whole.

You will ensure content support for our Project Management and Business Development functions when we scope our bids and projects.

We also expect you to have knowledge of different innovation processes, tools, methods and approaches. In order to succeed you need to be able to collaborate with a diverse group of internal and external stakeholders from civil servants to software engineers and business developers.

• Effectively lead the Team, inspiring others to achieve goals through innovation, quality and excellence, allocate tasks, evaluate performance and set objectives
• Develop innovative commercial and internal projects at all stages from conception to seeking funding.
• Understand project requirements, coordinate with resources and direct the projects in the right direction in a timely manner,
• Make presentations on the status of the activities and the project pipeline, preparing monthly and annual reports to the Applied Data & Technology Programme Director
• Shape and work on several projects at any one time working closely with our Business Development and Project Management teams.
• As well as delivering our projects, you’ll develop our wider Urban Technology capabilities and contribute to our knowledge base in collaboration with our Insight & Design, and Communications teams.
• You will connect with networks of developers and practitioners in various fields of technology, ensuring that we have access to cutting-edge research and methods.
• You’ll communicate and disseminate our work, and actively contribute to the development of the domain by sharing our results and best practices.
• You may be required to undertake any other reasonable duties to support the Catapult in achieving its strategic outcomes and ensure effective business operations.

• Broad commercial and academic experience, ideally including a start-up or SME
• Track record in delivering innovation in an R&D/ innovation type environment
• Wide understanding of current technology debates in the area of IoT (and LPWAN in particular) around issues of interoperability.
• Excellent knowledge of technology testing methods and experience in using them in real-world projects.
• Experience in projects centred on urban challenges, technologies and places.
• Proven leadership skills, running both multi-disciplinary teams and project delivery, including excellence in team-building and person management skills.
• Ability to guide the team through from the proof of concept stage to prototyping, design development, testing and deployment stages and review the completed work.
• Minimum of seven years’ experience in business, whether employed or self-employed, in large or small firms. Business development experience is desirable.
• Strong presentation and communication skills.

Desirable:

• Demonstrable experience of leading product or service development projects which combine design and technology.
• Understanding of either the Insight and Design stages of product development or the commercialisation/ scaling of opportunities to commercial success
• Knowledge of urban strategies and policies.

Characteristics

• Open innovator: Creatively seek and develop ideas and handle innovation projects.
• Enabler: create structures and processes so that innovation can happen in organisations and places.
• Promoter: work to persuade and disseminate the knowledge of innovation
• Entrepreneurial: proactively identify and develop opportunities

You are excited by the possibility of working in one of the world’s leading place based innovation centres, a place full of a diverse group of talents and perspectives. You have a strong desire to thrive in an environment that sits between public and private, between cities and tech, between art and science, between research and practice.

We’re not fully sure whether this role is open to international candidates. If you would need visa sponsorship or work authorisation, we recommend checking directly with the employer before applying.