Business Design Specialist ( Testing )

Rathbones provides individual investment and wealth management services for private clients, charities, trustees and professional partners. We have been trusted for generations to manage and preserve our clients’ wealth.

Our tradition of investing and acting responsibly has been with us from the beginning and continues to lead us forward. Our ambition is to be recognised as the UK’s most responsible wealth manager.

We see it as our responsibility to invest for everyone’s tomorrow. That means doing the right thing for our clients and for others too. Keeping the future in mind when we make decisions today. Looking beyond the short term for the most sustainable outcome. This is how we build enduring value for our clients, make a wider contribution to society and create a lasting legacy. Thinking, acting and investing responsibly.

Job Title:  Business Design Specialist ( Testing )

Department: Technology

Location: London, Liverpool, Glasgow

Contract Type: Permanent

Reporting to: Kirsty Freeman

The Role

A specialist role within the Technology department, combining knowledge of Testing and quality engineering. This role is a specialist working in a multi-disciplined team, alongside Business Design specialists in Architecture and Business analysis, delivering a unified business design capability.

The role is to ensure that quality is thought about and designed into the change processes from the start, to deliver the most effective change, optimizing business processes and proving quality and accuracy of delivery

Outcomes of the Role

As a Design Specialist, you will provide depth of knowledge across testing, working closely with team members and other design specialisms. The unified Business Design Capability aims to cover Technical and Business design, and overall quality engineering (testing).

As a design specialist, you will be expected to lead of complex business testing, ensuring quality is engineered into the product throughout and testing is clear and how business outcomes can be tested and proved. You will also be expected to support Design Analysts in the team, who focus on breadth of knowledge across all 3 disciplines.

Your role encompasses several key responsibilities and areas of focus:

• Motivates and supports teams' members on testing activities for the overall product portfolio.
• Support a culture of high-performance business analysis & innovation.
• Partnering design specialists within the team to provide a holistic unified design team for product change.
• Through experience and knowledge built through assignment within a product portfolio to identify opportunities for synergy, efficiency and innovation.
• Support establishing Communities of Practise, focusing on testing practises, across all product portfolios, evolving and managing standards, principles, tooling and ways of working.
• Join and support a culture of service excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement within the team
• Responsible for ensuring that vision to be “the firm’s Technology partner - providing sustainable services that enable the business strategy” is delivered, within the operating and design principles agreed
• Support and embed the Agile culture that helps to accelerate both the pace and value of the deliveries
• Development of testing policy, testing capacity planning and tooling.
• Working with other members of the department and business, ensure requirements are correctly documented
• Formulation and implementation of Testing strategies / approaches
• Able to apply a Risk Based Testing approach
• Resource management (allocation, monitoring, motivating etc) and test environment management
• Preparation/review of test plans, scripts, and reports
• Responsible for developing and improving the maturing of testing with Rathbones, covering the areas as defined in the ISTQB Advanced Qualification
• Monitor testing maturity and produce associated reports (Department and project)
• Working closely with the Product team as a subject matter expert in your discipline you will be expected to actively contribute to discussions on current issues, develop associated designs, policy and/or guidance.
• Monitor the market to gain knowledge and understanding of emerging technologies and products within your area of expertise.  Assess their relevance and potential value to the organisation, and brief your manager.
• Appreciate the needs of business users and help your team / manager align IT services to meet these in the most appropriate and cost-effective way.
• When requested, contribute to project plans for the implementation of upgrades and developments to systems and services.
• Adhere to all Rathbone, IT department and IT team policies and procedures.
• Undertake any other task as requested by the Team Manager or Team Lead, documenting dates, issues and actions arising

Agile Methodologies:

• Implement agile methodologies to enhance flexibility, responsiveness, and continuous improvement.
• Conduct regular stand-ups, retrospectives, and iterative planning sessions.

Risk Management

• Working with Technology Service team and 2LOD Operational Risk, ensure that a consistent framework is in place to systemically identify, measure, mitigate, monitor & manage risks.
• Embed a strong risk culture, where managing risk is simply part of how we work.
• Ensure adherence to the risk management policy and procedures, including expected standards of internal control.

Professional Development

• Take responsibility for ensuring personal continuing professional development.
• Ensuring that the development & training needs of direct reports are monitored, appraised & met. Develop direct reports with a view to contingency & succession.
• Fully meet the requirements of Rathbones’ Competencies & Values.

Other

• Support to the function budgetary process, headcount planning, & expenditure tracking for relevant area of responsibilities.
• Contribute towards the continuing development of Group Technology, as well as the wider Group by establishing and participating in projects, committees and other activities as required from time to time, as directed by the Group Technology Director and/or Group COO.
• Any other duties as required.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Demonstrable leadership, working with senior stakeholder and managing large teams.
• Demonstrable detail-oriented, analytical and problem-solving mindset.
• Ability to influence, engage and collaborate with a diverse range of personalities.
• Excellent interpersonal and articulate communication skills, including ability to negotiate successful outcomes. 
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team and be able to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.
• Proactive and self-motivated with a strong desire to learn and improve
• Acts with integrity
• Excellent co-ordination / organisation skills
• Analytical and planning skills coupled with an independent, objective and process-oriented way of working. 
• Able and confident to challenge assumptions and probe detail.
• Strong understanding of wealth management products, services, and regulatory requirements.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Knowledge of Agile methodologies and experience working in Agile environments is a plus.
• Highly developed business analytical skills – specifically aimed at the generation of complete and consistent business requirements and business cases for IT Change, in collaboration with SME’s
• High levels of initiative, professionalism, independence and resilience
• Proven record of producing quality technical requirements, design and test documentation

Life at Rathbones

We aim to become an employer of choice for the wealth management sector, to achieve this we are working hard to build a diverse, equal, and inclusive workplace that motivates, develops and embraces the strengths of all our colleagues. Being part of Rathbones means you will join a team of passionate professionals in a successful culture that cares for its people. At Rathbones, we provide meaningful work, opportunities, and a voice to all.

We are committed to building a team that is made up of diverse skills, experiences and abilities and encourage applications from all backgrounds. We welcome individuals who share our values – those that are passionate about client service, operate with the highest levels of integrity and have a strong results focus.