Support Desk Manager
Role Overview
Lead day-to-day operational delivery of application support for an enterprise client across business-critical applications, reporting solutions and data platforms.
Coordinate work across analysts and technical teams, keeping priorities clear, issues progressing and stakeholders informed.
This is an operational leadership role, not a traditional IT helpdesk or line-management position; technical teams remain responsible for delivering fixes.
The role reports to the Support Desk Lead and offers autonomy to improve processes, reporting and ways of working.
Key Skills for This Role
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The role
Lead day-to-day operational delivery of application support for an enterprise client across business-critical applications, reporting solutions and data platforms.
Coordinate work across analysts and technical teams, keeping priorities clear, issues progressing and stakeholders informed.
This is an operational leadership role, not a traditional IT helpdesk or line-management position; technical teams remain responsible for delivering fixes.
The role reports to the Support Desk Lead and offers autonomy to improve processes, reporting and ways of working.
Service delivery and coordination
- Coordinate daily first- and second-line application support and ensure incidents, requests and technical issues have clear ownership.
- Monitor service commitments, ticket backlogs, recurring issues and operational risks; act when work is delayed or blocked.
- Coordinate investigations with engineering, QA and other technical teams, manage dependencies and escalate blockers.
- Challenge priorities, address ownership gaps and escalate resource or performance concerns to functional leads.
Improvement, reporting and engagement
- Develop incident, problem, escalation and operational handover processes; improve tooling, automation, documentation and knowledge sharing.
- Define service reporting requirements, coordinate dashboard development and analyse performance data for trends, risks and attention areas.
- Coordinate knowledge transfer and maintain documentation as applications, processes and service responsibilities change.
- Support client service reviews with performance insights, issue updates and operational risk visibility; manage stakeholder expectations.
Required skills and experience
- Experience supporting enterprise applications, ideally in a senior analyst, support lead or operational coordination capacity.
- Organise competing priorities and coordinate work across teams, taking ownership and keeping work progressing.
- Working knowledge of SQL and relational databases, including basic queries, data relationships and common data-related issues.
- Understand ITIL practices at Foundation level, especially incident, problem, change and service level management; certification is not required.
- Technical awareness to follow application investigations and work with engineers and specialists.
- Interpret support data, identify trends, communicate technical matters clearly and demonstrate initiative improving support processes.
Desirable skills and experience
- Service reports or dashboards using Power BI, Excel or similar tools.
- Configuring or improving service management platforms, ticketing workflows or knowledge management systems.
- Supporting data-intensive enterprise applications, system integrations or data warehouses.
- Using automation tools to streamline support processes and reduce manual effort.
Location and workplace
- Hybrid role based in either the Oxford or Bristol office, with flexibility for remote working.
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