Location: Hybrid (VHQ, Crawley)
Hours: 37.5 per week, Monday–Friday
Contract: Permanent
Salary: Competitive
Closing date: 19th August 2026
In a nutshell
At Virgin Atlantic Airways, we believe that everyone can take on the world, and it's our vision to become the most loved travel company. As we embark on this next exciting stage of our journey, we're harnessing our spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation to challenge the status quo.
The Role
We are recruiting for a Technical Application Platform Owner who will work alongside major programmes of change to accept into service new application solutions, technologies and services that support the Customer & Operations directorate. The role will be expected to influence at a senior level and represent the Technology and Enterprise Transformation division in project steering committees and governance forums. This role will work closely with Enterprise and Solution Architecture to ensure new initiatives are supportable, secure, resilient and aligned to enterprise standards. The successful candidate will have a strong grasp of application platform management, operational support, supplier management, technology roadmaps and service governance.
The Technical Application Platform Owner will report to the Head of Enterprise Applications. Working closely with key business stakeholders across Customer & Operations, Enterprise Transformation, Architecture, Service Management and strategic suppliers will be key. The role will influence at Senior Leadership Group level and, where required, support board-level discussions. This role is critical to ensuring platform stability during a significant period of transformation while enabling innovation and continual improvement across the application estate.
Key Responsibilities
- Acting as the technical custodian for a portfolio of Customer & Operations applications and associated integrations.
- Defining, understanding and mitigating operational risk across your application portfolio, regularly reporting risks through appropriate governance forums.
- Owning the operational health, resilience, lifecycle management and continual improvement of the applications within your portfolio.
- Working with business stakeholders, Enterprise Architecture and suppliers to define and maintain application roadmaps aligned to business objectives.
- Leading technical discovery and providing guidance on the feasibility and supportability of new initiatives.
- Ensuring application documentation, interface specifications, support processes and architectural artefacts remain accurate and maintained.
- Acting as an escalation point for major incidents, service risks and technical blockers impacting delivery.
- Working with suppliers and support partners to improve service performance and address service level agreement (SLA) concerns.
- Supporting Technical Review Group, CAB, governance and service review forums as the technology SME for your application portfolio.
- Working with Information Security to understand vulnerabilities, security risks and compliance requirements across the application estate.
- Ensuring applications are fit for purpose, deliver expected business outcomes and provide value to Virgin Atlantic.
- Driving continual service improvement, platform optimisation and application rationalisation initiatives.
Specifically, we'd be looking for someone with the following experience:
- Managing external technology and delivery partners.
- Experience supporting and governing enterprise application platforms in a complex environment.
- Working closely with business stakeholders to ensure applications remain fit for purpose and continue to deliver business value.
- Defining technology roadmaps and contributing to strategic planning activities.
- Managing operational risk, incidents, problems and service performance.
- Promoting best practice and ensuring compliance with technology, security and governance standards.
- Collaborating with architects, suppliers and delivery teams to drive platform stability and continual improvement.
- Proven experience in technical delivery management, ideally within a regulated or aviation environment.
Our differences make us stronger
If this sounds like you, and you would like to be on this exciting journey with us, we would love to hear from you!
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do our colleagues. That’s why we’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. At Virgin Atlantic, we believe everyone can take on the world - no matter your age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabilities, religion, or beliefs. We celebrate difference and everything that makes our colleagues unique by upholding an inclusive environment in which we can all thrive. So that everyone at Virgin Atlantic can be themselves and know they belong.
To make your journey with us accessible and individual to you, we encourage you to let us know if you’d like a little extra help with your application, or if you have any individual requirements at any stage along your recruitment journey. We are here to support you, so please reach out to our team, ([email protected]) feeling confident that we’ve got your individual considerations covered.
Skills Required
- Experience managing external technology and delivery partners
- Experience supporting and governing enterprise application platforms in a complex environment
- Experience working with business stakeholders to ensure applications remain fit for purpose and deliver business value
- Experience defining technology roadmaps and contributing to strategic planning
- Experience managing operational risk, incidents, problems, and service performance
- Experience promoting best practices and ensuring compliance with technology, security, and governance standards
- Experience collaborating with architects, suppliers, and delivery teams to drive platform stability and continual improvement
- Proven experience in technical delivery management
- Experience in a regulated or aviation environment
What We Do
Virgin Atlantic first took to the skies in 1984 to shake things up, bringing a sparkle of red, a touch of wit and a passion for flying to the grey world of airlines. We fell in love with creating the best experience in the skies for our customers, and they fell in love with us right back. Since then we’ve become Britain’s second largest carrier, with non-stop transatlantic routes including New York, Orlando, the Caribbean, Delhi and Johannesburg. And thanks to our hugely successful joint venture with Delta, Air France and KLM, we can seamlessly connect our customers to over 350 cities across North America, Europe and the UK. Today, we want to empower everyone to take on the world. The customers we proudly fly and our people who go the extra mile. As we embark on a brand spanking new era of travel, it gives us more opportunities to do things differently and lead the way with fresh ideas. This means becoming more sustainable for our planet and our destinations, and working hard to make travel open to everyone, no matter who you are, who you love or where you go. And of course never, ever, forgetting the small stuff - like the clink of champagne glasses on a special occasion or a cheeky cream tea at 30,000 feet.
