Service Operations Manager

Role overview

Service control and incident leadership

• Own performance, availability, and operational health of live services and oversee incidents, problems, risks, dependencies, and service performance.
• Coordinate operational priorities, resources, and support activities.
• Lead responses to major incidents and disruptions; act as senior escalation point for serious and out-of-hours issues.
• Ensure effective incident communication, recovery, review, and completion of follow-up actions.

Readiness and improvement

• Ensure services are supportable, monitored, documented, and resourced before entering business as usual.
• Represent operational requirements in projects, change, and organisational initiatives.
• Drive measurable improvements using evidence from incidents, service performance, risk, and user feedback.
• Promote automation and efficiency and reduce recurring issues and service requests.

Leadership and governance

• Lead and develop the Service Operations team and build effective relationships with stakeholders, suppliers, and partner organisations.
• Work with service delivery managers to hold third parties accountable for their impact on service performance and user experience.
• Report on performance, trends, risks, blockers, and decisions; collaborate to keep governance, controls, and processes effective.
• Support financial planning, resource forecasting, and operational decision-making.
• Recruit, interview, hire, and train staff; oversee daily workflow, provide one-to-ones and performance evaluations, and handle discipline and termination in line with company policy.

Experience and technical qualifications

• Experience with ITSM toolsets such as ServiceNow, Freshservice, or Jira.
• Proven stakeholder-management experience or a related skill such as customer service.
• Good technical understanding of the organisation’s platforms and tools, including common issues.
• ITIL v4 Foundation certification at minimum.
• Understanding of common SQL queries and ability to identify anomalies.
• Experience managing a multidisciplinary operational team and adapting processes to a methodology such as ITIL.

Personal and clearance requirements

• Strong critical thinking and decision-making, written and verbal communication, and ability to communicate technical information to non-technical audiences.
• Able to maintain high standards while working independently, with strong attention to detail and clear, consistent communication.
• Familiarity with cross-disciplinary work in the public sector.
• Must be eligible for NPPV3 and SC vetting clearances.

Working arrangements

• The role is remote, with some national travel for meetings.

Salary

• Salary starts at £60,000 per annum.