Research & Development Tax Senior Manager - IT Specialist

Every day we work with the world’s most innovative companies and we are looking for a new team member that is passionate about cutting-edge technology to join us in KPMG’s R&D Innovation Reliefs and Incentives Team as a Software Technology Senior Manager, to help our clients grow their businesses in the UK and globally.

• KPMG have a diverse and inclusive workplace. We foster a culture of agility and curiosity. Could this be the perfect next step for your career?
  
  The Role
  
  You will be working with high profile clients, primarily FTSE 350 global companies, to help them prepare and deliver R&D tax incentive claims based on their innovative technology-focussed activities. You will be working within a diverse team comprised of experienced technology, science, engineering and tax specialists.  Your primary focus will be to work alongside our clients’ software engineers in the Financial Services sector covering Banking, Insurance, Investment Management, Fintech and Payment Technology providers.  As part of this role, you will gain an insight into the technology challenges that such companies in the UK and globally are facing.

This opportunity is suitable for candidates who have previous experience of working as software developers or technical architects and who also have experience working with clients to help them submit R&D tax incentive claims. The candidate will seek to use their prior R&D tax knowledge and IT experience in a creative and analytical way.  This role would suit individuals who are looking to work in a consultancy environment in a client-facing role.

It will require you to possess:

• Previous experience of helping clients claim R&D tax incentives;
• Strong technical knowledge across a diverse range of technologies;
• Excellent communication, project management and client relationship building skills;
• Proven ability and experience working as part of a dynamic team working together to deliver excellent outcomes to clients/stakeholders.

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Liaise with our clients technical leads, developers and architects to discuss their project portfolio with a view to identifying the key technology challenges faced during a specific claim year(s);

• Lead these discussions with confidence and with the support of our technical associates to identify which of the activities undertaken meet the R&D Guidelines;
  • Prepare and review technical summaries describing the innovations and technical challenges within the projects undertaken by our clients to illustrate their qualifying R&D activities;
  • Establish and maintain strong relationships, with both existing and new clients, through proactive communication and demonstrating technical expertise and insight;
  • Be a strong team player and effective contributor, working collaboratively with other team members with different skills sets;
  • Support more senior colleagues pursuing new business opportunities with companies that are pushing the boundaries of innovation and can therefore claim R&D tax incentives;
  • Build an internal network within the wider KPMG firm.
  
  You bring to the role
  
  This role will suit an IT professional with experience with a previous employer and/or in helping clients claim R&D tax incentives.
  
  Our ideal candidate will have:
  
  • A degree in IT, Computer Science or similar, to 2.1 level.
  • Previous experience of helping clients claim R&D tax incentives.
  • Experience as a software developer or technical architect.
  • Experience of working on and resolving typical technical challenges faced by technologists in an enterprise environment, for example, resolving issues related to performance, scale, security or integration with other systems.
  • Ability to research, extract and understand complex technical information and excel in articulating the information in a concise manner (both written and verbal) for technical and non-technical audiences.
  • A passion for technology with the ability to learn about how different technologies are developed and applied within a range of sectors.
  • Project management experience and be able to demonstrate the ability to handle multiple tasks, switch priorities and focus as required.
  • Experience working collaboratively within different multi-disciplinary teams whilst being focussed on delivering excellent outcomes to a range of stakeholders.
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills, which enable you to actively participate in structured discussions with both technical and finance staff.
  • Experience / knowledge in a range of the following technical areas would be beneficial:

-Software design and development technologies: .NET, Java, C++, Objective-C, Go, Node.js, Swift, Android, Python, Lua, Groovy, Perl, Python, SQL and NoSQL databases, ERP and CRM systems.
-Data science: Predictive analytics, Stream analytics, Distributed data storage, Data mining and ETL. Big Data: Hadoop, Spark or Storm.
-Cloud technologies: AWS, Azure, IBM, Google Cloud, PaaS, IaaS and SaaS.
-Architectural patterns: SOA / Microservices, Monolithic, Event-driven and Serverless.
-Middleware technologies: Message brokers such as Kafka, ActiveMQ or RabbitMQ, API Gateways, JSON, REST, Protocol Buffers.
-DevOps tooling: Docker containers, Kubernetes, Virtual Machines, Apache Mesos, Puppet, Ansible, Terraform and Infrastructure as Code.