If you are having difficulty downloading the application form or candidate booklet here, please navigate to www.consciatalent.com/GRAI where they are also available.
 The Role - Overview
The GRAI is seeking to appoint an Assistant Director, National Exclusion Register & Integration Projects (Assistant Principal Officer - Standard Scale). Successful applicants will be placed on a panel for a period of up to 18 months to fill future vacancies for Assistant Director of the National Exclusion Register - Integration Projects (AP - Standard Scale) or similar roles within the same Directorate in order of merit.
This is a technical position reporting to the Director of Technology/Digital First, the Assistant Director of the National Exclusion Register - Integration Projects (AP - Standard Scale) will lead the GRAI’s technical implementation of the National Exclusion Register and will be responsible for the organisation’s overall integration strategies. The role will be pivotal in delivering the scheme, including a database containing highly sensitive personal information.
Its primary role is the establishment of a fit for purpose National Gambling Exclusion Register. This is mandated under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 as a vehicle for problem gamblers, and others who wish to exclude themselves from online gambling operators. This will be a major project and will be dealing with circa 200-300 online operators, which may increase in the future. The system will need to be highly performant, processing transactions in real-time, ensuring resilience while being easy to use for gamblers at a crisis point in their addiction. This will require clear identity management of this cohort.
The Assistant Director of the National Exclusion Register & Integration Projects will provide leadership, advice and practical experience in delivering integration management strategy, projects and solutions. They will be charged with supporting the implementation of solutions and facilitating the integration of the scheme with Operators licensed in the Irish jurisdiction.
It is important to highlight the scale and real-time nature of this solution, where the availability, performance and resilience of the National Exclusion Register will be critical to its overall success and where failures of same have real potential to introduce substantial and material issues for the Authority.
The candidate should bring a range of industry experience to the GRAI, with the opportunity to influence the design, architecture and development of the schemes implementation. The modern solution being implemented will be based on cloud architecture. The role will focus on fostering innovation and propelling the GRAI’s digital initiatives through the incorporation of cutting-edge technologies and industry best practices. The role will take full ownership over the GRAI related strategic decisions and collaborate with other leaders in maximising value from GRAI assets. The role will involve interactions across the GRAI organisation, its service partners and stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities:
- Leading the development, rollout and ongoing operations of Ireland’s Gambling Exclusion Scheme
- Engage with Gambling industry representatives, people with Lived Experience of using exclusion scheme, and Gambling Regulators in other jurisdictions in the design of a system for Ireland.
- Setting and driving an integration strategy for the organisation
- Leading related projects in the organisation including establishing formal Registers as required
- Setting and driving integration management standards for the organisation, catering for API-driven solution development, Security and Authentication awareness
- Supporting general information governance initiatives in the organisation, as relevant to compliance with regulatory requirements and general emerging best practice in the sector and competency area with a strong focus on data privacy and compliance
- Developing and implementing an integration management strategy, assisting the GRAI in achieving its strategic objectives and meeting the needs of internal and external stakeholders, ensuring a stable architecture and service design
- Helping to build the organisations data sharing capabilities, both internally and externally
- Cooperating in the development and management of data governance and associated standards in the GRAI in partnership with relevant stakeholders
- Ensuring that quality data is captured by the GRAI, addressing data quality issues and data gaps being a priority
- Seek to cooperatively contribute to a forward-looking culture, where opportunities to apply modern techniques and machine learning / artificial intelligence is a future capability
- Ensure that integration measurement presentation is strong, with suitable visualisation techniques applied as appropriate to business need
- Work with relevant teams, internal and external, to ensure that organisations integration architecture and standards are complied with
- Engage as required with application architecture teams, internal and external, ensuring that suitable compliant strategies are applied to data capture and quality standards
- Develop and support end-to-end business application solutions, or infrastructure and operational solutions, across a broad set of leading technologies including integration, and transformation solutions
- Promote the effective use of ICT to support the business of the organisation
- Take responsibility for ensuring issues are resolved or escalated to the proper resources to resolve in a timely manner with minimum disruption to the operational areas
- Ensure that relevant ICT-related standards, policies and procedures are adhered to and built upon
- Participate in the development and implementation of relevant ICT-related standards, policies and procedures as required
- Create and maintain comprehensive documentation
- Show leadership in ensuring a focus on continuous improvement and quality service delivery.
- Manage issues and risks and drive progress to ensure project timelines are met
- Work with and support business units to help identify ICT need
- Explain complex technical information to a non-technical audience
- Work within, and across, Departments and functions as may be required to deliver on projects which have a cross functional relevance
- Develop and undertake such training and development, as may be required to ensure that ICT staff stay up to date with relevant technologies
- Assist in vendor and contract management
Essential Criteria
To be eligible to apply for this role, you must clearly demonstrate in your application form that you meet the following essential criteria:
Education:
- An Honours Bachelor’s degree or Higher Diploma (minimum NFQ Level 8) in Data science, Data and Data Analytics, Statistics, Computer Science, Business Information Systems, Information Technology, Business Analytics, or a related discipline.
Experience:
- At least five years’ relevant professional experience within a solution delivery and integration management or similar role.
Integration Strategy & Governance:
- Experience in developing integration strategies, platforms, and standards within governance or quality control frameworks.
- Knowledge of data governance, including data quality management, compliance requirements, and data security (particularly for Personally Identifiable Information – PII).
Identity Management, Validation and Quality Control:
- Experience in Identity Management processes, with a focus on Master Data Management procedures, consolidating multiple records from various sources into a single, enriched, accurate master profile. Specific experience in the management of identities of individuals and organisations in a public service context.
Technical Proficiency:
- Proficiency in integration analysis and visualisation tools (e.g. SQL, Power BI, Tableau, Python, R).
- Experience in integration management, ELT process management, and modelling.
Large scale data integration:
- Experience delivering complex integrations across multiple systems including API design, implementation and monitoring.
- A strong background in the implementation of modern integration techniques, including RESTFUL APIs, is required.
Data Cleaning and Enrichment Expertise:
- Strong background in normalising and de-duplicating large legacy datasets, repairing incomplete or corrupted data and enhancing core registries for downstream integrations e.g. analytics and reporting.
Experience working with Research partners:
- Experience in working closely with independent, research institutes supporting the development and delivery of evidence-based research to inform public policy and decision making in the public sector.
Stakeholder Engagement and Management – Social Sector:
- Strong background in stakeholder management in the social sector, such as Charitable bodies, where there will be substantial requirements to engage with the social sector.
Desirable Criteria
Sector & Regulatory Knowledge:
- Knowledge of the gambling sector or similar regulatory frameworks.
- Experience with public sector data initiatives, open data, or data-sharing schemes.
- Strong knowledge of GDPR compliance and secure information exchange practices.
Systems & Platform Experience:
- Experience managing the development, deployment, and maintenance of ICT systems for online licensing, payments, and public registers, including implementing real-time API integrations at scale.
- Experience with Salesforce CRM, MuleSoft and Tableau (or industry-recognised equivalents).
- Experience in implementing, or interacting with from a Gambling Operators perspective, an actual Exclusion Register or similar use case at scale.
Technical Proficiency:
- In-depth demonstratable experience in the development and implementation of end-to-end integration capabilities for the enterprise, catering for some or all:
o Information Collection
o Integration Management
o Reporting
Communication & Stakeholder Engagement:
- Ability to present complex data findings clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, and to collaborate effectively with internal and external stakeholders.
How to Apply
Conscia will be managing all aspects of the recruitment process on behalf of the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. Applications should be made online through https://consciatalent.com/grai and by attaching a completed application form, downloadable at the link above.
Your application must be submitted on the https://consciatalent.com/grai website not later than 3pm (Irish time) on Monday 27th April.
If you do not receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your application within 24 hours of applying, please email: grai@consciatalent.com
If you are having difficulty downloading the application form or candidate booklet here, please navigate to www.consciatalent.com/GRAI where they are also available.
