About this role
Salary: £55,000 - 65,000 per year
Requirements
- Significant experience managing a portfolio of business-critical IT services.
- Proven experience leading and developing Service Desk teams.
- Strong experience with IT Service Management (ITSM) platforms and service improvement initiatives.
- Demonstrable success delivering automation, AI-enabled service improvements, and operational efficiencies.
- Extensive experience managing service performance, governance, customer experience, risk, and continual improvement programmes.
- Ability to influence senior stakeholders and communicate complex service issues clearly in business-focused terms.
- Experience managing strategic suppliers, service contracts, and commercial relationships.
- Strong financial management skills, including budgeting, forecasting, cost optimisation, and investment planning.
- Experience leading major incident management, service recovery, and problem management activities.
- Excellent understanding of incident management, service request fulfilment, problem management, change enablement, service level management, service design and transition, and continual service improvement.
- ITIL certification is essential.
- Strong understanding of service resilience, operational controls, cyber security, data protection, business continuity, backup, and recovery.
- Visible and credible leadership, with the ability to inspire high standards and accountability.
- Strategic thinking that connects business goals with technology services and customer outcomes.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills at all organisational levels.
- Calm, decisive, and resilient under pressure.
- Commercial awareness and focus on value, outcomes, and continuous improvement.
- Skills in stakeholder management, negotiation, and conflict resolution.
- Analytical, data-driven approach and ability to turn complex information into clear actions and recommendations.
- Customer-focused, pragmatic, adaptable, and proactive, with a commitment to building a mature service management culture.
Responsibilities
- Own the end-to-end performance, governance, and continual improvement of IT services.
- Develop and maintain service management strategies, operating plans, and improvement roadmaps, translating business priorities into effective service outcomes.
- Chair service reviews and governance forums, reporting on performance, risks, financials, and improvement activity.
- Lead and develop the Service Desk function, setting objectives, expectations, and performance standards.
- Ensure consistent processes for incident and service request intake, triage, prioritisation, routing, communication, and fulfilment, and foster a customer-centric culture.
- Own service performance, customer satisfaction, resilience, and service value; define, monitor, and report on KPIs, SLAs, customer experience metrics, and operational trends.
- Produce management reports and dashboards, identify recurring issues, and improve service quality and efficiency.
- Champion responsible automation and AI adoption; reduce manual effort, improve consistency, accelerate fulfilment, and enhance customer experience.
- Maintain a prioritised continual improvement portfolio and deliver measurable improvements in service quality, resilience, efficiency, and user satisfaction.
- Lead major incident responses and critical service escalations, ensuring clear communication, business continuity, service restoration, and stakeholder engagement.
- Drive problem management and post-incident reviews, and own service change governance while balancing innovation, stability, and risk.
- Ensure new and changed services transition smoothly into operational support.
- Manage strategic supplier relationships and performance, holding suppliers accountable for contractual obligations, service levels, and improvement commitments.
- Support contract negotiations, renewals, procurement, and sourcing decisions; oversee service budgets, forecasts, cost optimisation, and demand management.
- Maintain oversight of service risks, controls, operational resilience, and compliance requirements, including cyber security, data protection, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, and audit obligations.
- Support adherence to recognised industry standards and best practices.
- Ensure service acceptance criteria, support models, ownership, documentation, monitoring, and funding are in place before services go live.
- Support and promote adherence to the ITIL framework, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 14001, and ESG principles.
Technologies
- AI
- Incident Management
- Support
- ITIL
- ITSM
- Security
More
We are seeking an experienced, customer-focused IT Service Manager for a pivotal leadership role overseeing business-critical IT services and the Service Desk. The position is based in Coventry, with hybrid working available, and is full-time and permanent, with a salary of £55,000–£65,000. We offer a competitive benefits package including a company share scheme, pension, private medical insurance, Medicash healthcare cash plan, financial planning support, death-in-service cover, permanent total disability insurance, enhanced family leave pay, company sick pay, professional training and development, professional membership support, health and wellbeing support, an employee assistance programme, annual flu vaccinations, eyecare support, and generous annual leave. The advertised services are provided by Gold Group as an agency and/or employment business; selected candidates will be contacted within 14 days for interview.
last updated 44 week of 2026