Service Management Lead

Purpose of the role

To manage the IT Services department, set strategic direction, provide support to senior management, and manage IT Service risk across the organisation. Responsibilities include representation of Technology service performance with senior stakeholders.

Accountabilities

Development of strategic direction for IT Services, including implementation of up-to-date methodologies and processes. Management of the IT Services department, including oversight of colleagues and their performance, implementation of departmental goals and objectives, and oversight of department efficiency and effectiveness.

Relationship management of IT Services stakeholders, including identifying relevant stakeholders and maintaining quality of external third party services. Development and implementation of policies and procedures for IT Services, adherence to control targets and standards, and managing adherence to group SLAs and controls associated with core technology production activities in incident, problem, and change. Management of IT Services risk, including identification of potential IT Services risks and development of strategies to mitigate those risks.

Monitoring the financial performance of the IT Services department, including revenue, profitability, and cost control, driving value from commercial agreements, and strong management of directly controlled costs.

Management of IT Services projects, including driving successful research and related product launches, and delivery of integrated solutions to clients. Effectively monitor and maintain the bank's critical technology infrastructure and resolve more complex technical issues, whilst minimising disruption to operations.

Expectations

To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change; plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements; and escape breaches of policies/procedures.

If managing a team, define jobs and responsibilities, plan future needs, counsel employees, and contribute to employee pay decisions/changes; lead specialists to influence operations of a department while balancing short and long term goals.

For individual contributors, act as a subject matter expert within own discipline and guide technical direction. Lead collaborative, multi-year assignments; guide team members through structured assignments; identify need for inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments; train, guide and coach less experienced specialists; provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.

Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment. Manage and mitigate risks through assessment to support control and governance agenda. Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls. Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of organisational functions to contribute to achieving business goals. Collaborate with other work areas to stay up to speed with business activity and strategies. Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought. Adopt outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes. Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders; use influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

Leadership Behaviours

• Listen and be authentic
• Energise and inspire
• Align across the enterprise
• Develop others

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced Service Management Lead to support BPMS Digital Service Management within GTSM. This role will be responsible for end-to-end run-the-bank service ownership across critical payments platforms, driving resilience, control adherence, and operational stability, while partnering closely with technology, operations, and senior stakeholders across BPMS.

Responsibilities & Qualifications

• End-to-end Service Management leadership across incident, problem, change, resilience, and controls in large-scale payments production environments.
• Risk, control, and resilience expertise with the ability to translate operational risk, audit, and cyber requirements into actionable remediation.
• Proven major incident leadership and stakeholder management at CIO/COO level, driving decisions and communications under pressure.
• Experience with observability, SRE practices, and automation tooling (AppDynamics, ITRS, ELK) to improve MTTR and reduce manual effort.
• Experience operating in a global delivery model across vendors, offshore teams, and multi-region support structures (UK/India/US).
• Strategic service improvement mindset with the ability to drive data-led transformation using KPIs, dashboards, and maturity frameworks.
• Strong communication skills and ability to interact with a diverse range of stakeholders.
• Job-specific technical skills relevant to IT Service Management.

Location

This role is based out of our office in Knutsford, Cheshire.