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Newsworthy Brit bank TSB is looking for a head of infrastructure
It's really high profile, you know
An exciting job advert has mysteriously appeared that is seeking a techie to head up infrastructure at TSB, just days after the bank's monumental and ongoing IT cockup began.
The Register has asked TSB what the recruitment means for current infrastructure head Damon Yates, who is still listed as holding the role on LinkedIn – a job he began back in November 2016. We also enquired if the new vacancy was in any way related to the bank's tech meltdown.
Just hours later, chief exec Paul "the Jester" Pester was telling UK radio listeners that the beleaguered bank was still "on its knees". The meltdown began during a planned migration on Friday 20 April, where TSB was to move customers from former parent Lloyds Banking Group's systems to a new platform.
Spanish bank Sabadell owns TSB and was supposed to transition 5 million-plus customers and 1.3 billion records to the new platform created by the bank, Proteo4UK, last weekend.
Pester's responses to the incident will no doubt go down as a masterclass on how not to do comms crisis management. Asked on BBC Radio 5 Live about his tweet on Monday, Day 3 of the outage – that claimed normal service had resumed – the CEO (comedy executive officer) responded that he wouldn't have said so if he hadn't meant it.
On Tuesday, Day 4 of the outage, Sabadell boasted about the success of the IT integration.
By Day 5 of the outage – seemingly just before he visited the Beeb radio studios – Pester issued a statement saying that services were back – it was just that half of customers couldn't see that, given online banking was still down.
Yesterday, Day 6 of the outage, during an unfortunately timed announcement of its first quarter financial results for 2018, the bank told the world it had drafted in a team of "global experts at IBM" who would help with systems integration. Pester also admitted yesterday that the migration had been an "incredibly bumpy" move.
The successful head of infrastructure candidate will report to the chief information officer.
"We’re responsible for 'IT Change', including the end-to-end architecture, deployment and maintenance of IT infrastructure technologies across TSB. We're the first technical point of contact for people in TSB who want to speak to the CIO function," stated the job blurb.
Apparently the department provides "direction, thought leadership, guidance and subject matter expertise on our IT estate to make sure we get the maximum value from our investment in our IT".
The ad added: "We do this by defining our IT strategy and aligning it with Sabadell Group IT, producing TSB technology roadmaps and identifying and recommending IT solution opportunities, supporting business initiatives and ideas, and documenting and managing our architecture assets."
Candidates interested in carrying the can getting their teeth stuck into IT change projects, are advised to apply early in order to avoid disappointment.
The Register wonders if any other new jobs are likely to come up at the bank in the not-too-distant future... ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
