Like tax? Love networks? UK taxmen have a job just for you

HM Revenue and Customs is hiring a head of networks, for those who fancy a real pre-Brexit IT challenge.

“We’re creating a dynamic, agile technology organisation that works on two levels: we want the most amazing experience for customers and citizens, both internal and external; and we are building careers that are rewarding and enjoyable for all of us,” burbles HMRC’s job ad for the up-to-£100k salaried post.

In return for your 37 hours a week, the taxman expects you to lead its Networks Delivery Group (“giving people clear direction and modelling great leadership behaviours and values”), help design future network infrastructure and develop roadmaps, run the NDG’s budget and ensure everything is secured.

You’ll also be in charge of migrating ever more of HMRC’s infrastructure onto external “partner” networks, which in simple English means you’ll need to negotiate how much HMRC pays Amazon Web Services – and, er, not look too closely at what happens to British cloud SMEs as a result of that AWS-centric migration process.

As everyone with more than a passing interest in world affairs knows, the UK is leaving the European Union in March next year. HMRC’s plans for coping with the inevitable surge in paperwork includes its digital Customs Declaration Service, which is pretty pivotal to the whole process of creaming taxes off goods entering and leaving this sceptred isle. Accordingly, the National Audit Office has declared it would be “catastrophic” for CDS not to work.

CDS’ predecessor, CHIEF, is built on ICL VME technology, and concerns have swirled for a while that if CDS stutters, CHIEF may not be able to take up the slack – and the time available to sort all this out is getting shorter by the day. Something else to turn the head of networks grey.

As we reported back in June: “Full import functionality [of CDS] is now due in November and export in December, with migration of traders expected to be complete in January.”

The full release of CDS, which is powered in part by IBM technology, has itself now been revised to March. ®