Lead Operations Engineer / Senior Operations Specialist

Senior Operations Lead – Service Operations Transformation (Contract)

Toyota Connected Europe (TCEU) · London (Hybrid) · Contract – Initial 3 months (extendable)

Outside IR35

About the role:

Our Operations function is at an important stage of its evolution. The department has an ambitious FY2026 plan to deliver: intelligent automation, AIOps, process excellence, stronger governance, workforce transformation into SRE/ARE-aligned engineering, and a new “Ops as a Product” operating model. To get there, we first need to stabilise and strengthen the current team's standards, ownership and ways of working.

We are looking for an experienced, hands-on Senior Operations Lead to join on an initial 3-month contract to do two things in parallel: stabilise the current team, resetting standards, ownership and customer confidence, and begin its transformation into a modern, engineering-led operations capability. The initial term is 3 months, with the possibility of extension depending on progress and business need; we are looking for someone capable of, and comfortable with, taking the transformation through to completion over a longer engagement if the contract is extended. This is a hands-on operational leadership and change assignment; you will need to be equally comfortable strengthening standards and accountability, running major incidents, and setting technical and process direction for the team's future state.

What you will do:

Phase 1 – Stabilise (initial 3-month contract):

· Reset day-to-day standards for ownership and accountability within the team to rebuild reliability and predictability in delivery.

· Re-establish role clarity so Operations is no longer perceived as a default “catch-all” for non-core or ad-hoc tasks; agree clear boundaries with Product, Engineering and Customer teams.

· Take direct ownership of major incidents (P1/P2), driving effective coordination, confident stakeholder communication and post-incident reviews to rapidly rebuild customer and leadership confidence.

· Break the L1/L2/L2.5/L3 “ticket-bouncing” pattern by clarifying escalation paths, triage ownership and SLA accountability across support tiers.

· Introduce interim KPIs and management reporting so performance, risk and improvement actions are visible, evidence-based and tracked to closure rather than reactive and undocumented.

· Define and enforce ITIL 4-aligned operational standards and controls, spanning Incident, Major Incident, Problem, Change, Release and SLA management, with full traceability and audit readiness, closing the current gaps in compliance and governance rigor.

· Support the design and mobilization of a new offshore/nearshore support capability to widen the skills market and manage cost sustainably.

· Present monthly status reviews and reporting on service performance, risk and transformation progress confidently to senior leadership and other internal and external stakeholders.

Phase 2 – Transform & Restructure (if contract is extended, months 3–12):

· Lead the team's transition from a legacy tiered (L1/L2/L3) support model to the target Unified Operations Engineering model, comprising Production Engineers, Application Reliability Engineers (AREs) and Service Analysts, embedding shift-left, “you build it, you run it” ownership with Engineering.

· Own delivery of the Hoshin FY2026 objectives assigned to the Ops Lead, in particular Process Excellence (redesigning Incident, Problem and Change workflows around SRE principles, SLOs and error budgets) and Workforce Transformation (skills audits, upskilling plans, and transitioning roles toward SRE/ARE), and contributing to Governance & Risk and Intelligent Automation.

· Champion process automation and responsible AIOps adoption to reduce manual toil, supporting the wider Intelligent Automation and AI & AIOps objectives.

· Contribute to building the department's “Ops as a Product” roadmap, including service catalogue, tiered service offerings, SLAs and the commercial/chargeback model.

About you:

· Extensive, demonstrable experience as a senior IT/Service Operations leader, ideally having led the stabilisation and transformation of a team through a period of significant change.

· Deep, practical ITIL 4 expertise across Incident, Problem, Change, Release and Service Level Management, with the credibility to redesign and enforce standards, not just document them.

· Working knowledge of the SFIA framework, able to use it to assess team capability, define role/skill profiles (e.g. Production Engineer, ARE, Service Analyst) and build workforce development plans; comfortable operating at SFIA Level 5–6 responsibility, setting direction, exercising significant autonomy, and influencing across the organisation.

· Direct experience transitioning traditional Ops/Application Support functions toward SRE, ARE or Production Engineering operating models, including SLOs, error budgets and blameless postmortems.

· Strong people-leadership and performance management skills, able to set clear standards for ownership and accountability while building a positive, high-performing team culture.

· Track record of managing major incidents and senior stakeholder communications with confidence under pressure, with sound commercial and risk awareness.

· Comfortable with cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure) and modern software delivery practices (CI/CD, containerisation) sufficient to credibly direct an engineering-led operations team.

· Experience setting up or scaling offshore/nearshore delivery capability.

· Excellent written and verbal communication, able to operate effectively from engineer to senior leadership level.

Nice to have:

· Experience designing or operating an “Ops as a Product” / internal chargeback model.

· Hands-on exposure to AIOps tooling (e.g. Datadog, PagerDuty) and AI-assisted operations.

· Experience in a large, complex, distributed technology environment of similar scale.

· Experience working with Big Data platforms.

· Automotive or connected mobility industry experience.

Contract details:

· Engagement type: Contract (outside IR35). Initial term of 3 months, focused on stabilisation, with the possibility of extension (up to c. 12 months in total) to lead the transformation phase. Candidates should be capable of, and open to, a longer-term engagement if the contract is extended.

· Location: London, hybrid working, with regular in-office presence expected to support the team stabilisation phase.

· Reporting line: Head of ITSM.