Migrations Operations Manager

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. We believe in a future of work in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being burnt out and overworked. Where data guides progress without overwhelming staff. And where everyone working in a school is reminded why they got into education every day. Our MIS and school management tools are already making a difference in over 12,000 schools and trusts. Giving time and power back to staff, turning data into clear, actionable insights, and supporting happier working days. At the heart of our brand is a recognition that the challenges schools face today aren’t just about efficiency, outputs and productivity - but about creating happier working lives for the people who drive education everyday: the staff. We want to make schools more joyful places to work, as well as learn.

We are looking for an experienced and collaborative Migration Operations Manager to join our Engineering team and lead the team responsible for the operational health of the migration journey for Arbor products, primarily Arbor MIS, alongside other products such as Arbor Finance. The remit and focus of the role is to line-manage and develop a team of Migration Operations Engineers, ensure smooth day to day operations, and drive lasting improvements across the migration pipeline. You will work closely with Onboarding, Support, and the Migration Product, and Platform teams to ensure migrations are executed at scale with high quality.. It’s a broad and exciting role, so we’re looking for someone up for a challenge - if you’re an effective leader and a good communicator, this is the role for you.

Core responsibilities

People Management & Leadership

Line-manage and support the development of Migration Operations Engineers, including conducting 1:1s, performance reviews, and fostering a collaborative and high-performing team culture

Recruit, onboard, and retain strong operational engineers, building a team that can scale with migration volume

Set the bar for operational quality, defining what “good” looks like for migration operations and holding the team to that standard

Mentor and coach team members in migration best practices, triage, root cause analysis, and escalation, delivering constructive feedback that balances recognition of strengths with actionable development areas

Foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and learning from both successes and failures

Champion knowledge sharing across the team and wider organisation through tech talks, playbooks, and structured learning

Manage team capacity against migration volume, ensuring timely and high-quality delivery across multiple products and countries

Oversee project planning for migration operations work, lead estimation and feasibility assessments, and take ownership of resource allocation and execution

Delivery & Execution

Ensure that migrations complete well within SLA, organising the team and on-call rota to ensure we have coverage during critical migration events

Own operational readiness for large-scale and time-sensitive migration windows, including risk assessments, checklists, and go/no-go decisions

Lead root cause analysis on failed or delayed migrations, identifying recurring failure patterns and systemic issues. Run post-incident reviews and ensure lessons learned are applied to prevent recurrence

Define and maintain triage frameworks, severity classification, prioritisation criteria, and escalation paths

Ensure migrations meet defined SLAs and quality benchmarks, contributing to the definition and evolution of those standards

Drive automation initiatives to reduce operational toil, improve data integrity checks, and increase migration throughput

Maintain and improve migration operational documentation, playbooks, and best practices

Adapt plans quickly when circumstances change mid-migration, making sound judgement calls under pressure

Collaboration & Communication

Provide structured, prioritised operational feedback and requirements to the Migration Product and Migration Platform team, acting as the voice of operations in platform decisions

Act as the migration operations function’s primary liaison with Onboarding, Support teams, proactively driving communication

Proactively flag migration risks, blockers, and timeline impacts to stakeholders, managing expectations and negotiating timelines when needed

Build strong working relationships with customer-facing teams to understand the school’s perspective, feeding that insight back into how migrations are prioritised and executed

Run or contribute to regular cross-team syncs to maintain alignment and surface issues early

Communicate migration status, risks, and decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, translating complex migration issues into understandable updates tailored to the audience

Demonstrated experience leading technical operations for complex production systems, with a track record of managing risk, improving reliability, and coordinating delivery across multiple workstreams.

Demonstrated ability in people management, including 1:1s, performance reviews, hiring, and developing engineers

Understanding of SLAs, operational metrics, and service reliability concepts (SLOs/SLIs)

Proven ability to deliver through others while maintaining the technical depth required to contribute hands-on when appropriate.

Significant experience operating or supporting data migration processes in production environments

Deep experience with monitoring and observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, or equivalent)

Experience with incident management, operational triage, and post-incident review processes

Strong stakeholder management skills with experience working directly with customer-facing teams

Proven ability to manage multiple workstreams, prioritise effectively under pressure, and adapt when circumstances change

Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Experience using AI tooling to increase team productivity, or a strong interest in doing so

Desirable

Experience in SaaS environments, particularly education technology or school MIS systems

Experience with data migrations between competing platforms at scale (ETL, cutovers, decommissioning of legacy systems)