Head of Service Management

Job description

The Head of Service Management & Operations role is responsible for establishing and maintaining world-class service management practices and operational excellence throughout the organisation. This role drives the implementation of ITIL-aligned service management processes while fostering a culture of reliability, continuous improvement, and customer-centricity. The position involves financial and operational oversight of all service management and operations teams, ensuring transparent service delivery with high availability standards and rapid incident resolution. The role manages and limits operational risk to customers while delivering measurable business value through optimised service operations.

Key Responsibilities & Requirements

Service Management & Operations Excellence

• Implementing vision and strategy for service management and operations excellence across the organisation
• Incident and problem management oversight, ensuring rapid service restoration, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement
• Change and release management coordination to minimise service disruptions while enabling fast, safe deployments
• Service level management, including SLA/SLO definition, monitoring, and reporting to stakeholders
• Operational risk management across all managed services to protect business operations and customer experience
• Driving operational excellence through standardised processes, automation, and continuous improvement initiatives
• Service portfolio management, including service ownership, lifecycle management, and dependency mapping
• Aligning service operations to meet evolving business needs and strategic objectives
• Building, monitoring and reporting key service performance indicators to provide visibility into service health, availability, and customer satisfaction

Incident & Problem Management Leadership

• 24/7 incident response coordination, ensuring rapid restoration of critical business services
• Major incident management, including executive communication, war room coordination, and post-incident reviews
• Problem management driving systematic identification and resolution of underlying service issues
• Service continuity planning and disaster recovery coordination to ensure business resilience
• Cross-functional collaboration with engineering teams to embed reliability practices and reduce incident frequency

Service Delivery & Customer Experience

• Service desk operations management, providing multi-tiered technical support to internal and external customers
• Customer communication during service disruptions, including status page updates and stakeholder notifications
• Service improvement programs based on customer feedback, metrics analysis, and industry best practices
• Vendor and supplier management for service management tools and third-party service providers

Leadership and People Development

• Build an effective and motivational team environment, aligning behaviours, values and performance expectations across all service management functions
• Sustain high employee engagement throughout teams and embed a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence
• Deploy appropriate talent development strategies to ensure the best possible talent pipeline for current and future service management needs
• Work as part of the IT Leadership Team to achieve collective success and help shape the long-term direction of service operations
• Ensure effective communication at all levels, both internally and externally, providing regular briefings on service performance, incidents, and improvement initiatives

Financial and Supplier Management

• Manage Opex and Capex budgets for the service management and operations department, ensuring appropriate planning and execution within financial targets
• Deliver a multi-year service improvement roadmap via an ongoing portfolio of operational excellence initiatives, successfully delivered on time, quality and cost
• Vendor relationship management for service management tools, monitoring platforms, and operational support services

Essential Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in IT Operations and Service Management
• Minimum 12+ years of working experience in ITIL service management practices and operational excellence
• Minimum 8 years of line management experience leading technical operations teams
• Minimum 8 years of experience managing specialist service management functions
• Proven leadership and management skills with the ability to optimise team performance during high-pressure incident scenarios
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to engage, negotiate and manage relationships with senior executives, business leaders, and external vendors
• Act as a trusted advisor and operational partner with major business functions during service disruptions and strategic planning
• Demonstrate operational leadership by managing and monitoring service quality, incident response effectiveness, and team performance
• Deep understanding of ITIL service management principles, incident/problem management, change control, and service level management
• Strong grasp of modern monitoring and observability platforms, incident management tools, and automation technologies
• Experience with service management tools such as ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, or similar ITSM platforms
• Understanding of cloud platforms and distributed systems architecture for effective service management
• Data-driven decision making with the ability to analyse service metrics and demonstrate the value of operational improvements

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in financial services or regulated industries with high availability requirements
• Agile and DevOps methodologies integration with service management practices
• Business continuity and disaster recovery planning experience

The Head of Service Management & Operations is critical for maintaining operational excellence and service reliability across the technology organisation while enabling rapid business growth through scalable service management practices.

Please note: This is a hybrid working role that requires a minimum of 3 days per week on-site in Central London.

Extra information

Status

Open

Education Level

Secondary School

Location

Greater London

Type of Contract

Casual / Part Time Jobs

Published at

27-12-2025

Profession type

Accountancy

Full UK/EU driving license preferred

No

Car Preferred

No

Must be eligible to work in the EU

No

Cover Letter Required

No

Languages

English