The Opportunity
We are excited to be supporting this award winning tech business as they look to expand their Senior Leadership Team with the appointment of a Head of IT Service and Operations. Leading the IT Operations and Security team, this key appointment will help deliver the business strategy throughout the company, modelling the Company values. In this pro-active position, the holder will need to achieve against a backdrop of a fast-changing work environment and commercial pressure, with a high degree of collaboration and leadership across multiple domains and disciplines.
The Head of IT Service & Operations will provide strong leadership; supporting and challenging the team to be their best selves, whilst developing talent through career progression.
The Role
The Head of IT Service & Operations will be responsible for leading both internal IT operations as well as overall responsibility for the successful execution of client-facing services, managing the customer facing side of their production services. You will ensure services are available, managing deployments, enhancements, and upgrades, working with clients informing them of service interruptions. . Specifically your main responsibilities will be:
- Leadership of the team, including performance reviews & providing coaching and support to drive the capability of the team, ensuring they have a customer focus.
- Primary escalation path for all P1 and P2 incidents, whilst also managing IT service escalations from the business or the clients
- Develop and deliver IT Service & Operations strategy in-line with business objectives.
- Develop and deliver to Service and Operations sub part of the budget (including regular tracking and re-forecasting process).
- Ensure the IT services are continually capable of supporting existing requirements and future growth. Investigate, propose, and deliver new and innovative technological solutions which aim to increase brand value and provide the business with a competitive advantage.
- Ensure the IT services are continually secure, and data always remains protected appropriately.
- Via the IT Security Manager, champion information security initiatives across the company to ensure that all services are continually secure, protecting sensitive information always.
- Discuss service levels with clients and ensure our Service Level Agreements meet both our contracted and commercial obligations, this will include generating reports internally and externally to demonstrate our position with our SLAs.
- Deliver cost effective solutions to business requirements including continual review of contracts & services, and effective change management.
- Ensure all services are appropriately licensed, including forecasting future growth needs.
- Own the internal IT business operations, ensuring they are functional, covering internal systems
- Own the relationship with all IT solution and service providers, improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of these supplied services, ensuring all IT services have necessary contracts and maintenance support, including regular review.
- Oversee the release of all production deployments, including approval of release at CAB, and associated documentation.
- Ensure all operational based helpdesk tickets are triaged and responded to within SLA's.
- Working with various teams including Engineering and QA to ensure optimal response times.
- Ensure that infrastructure (with a bias towards cloud in future) is always suitable for the business and managing enhancements and new deployment of services.
- Lead IT service improvement initiatives from identification, through design and implementation into live operation, following Service Transition best practices.
- Reduce service interruptions through effective incident and problem management
- Lead projects to implement service improvements or new service developments across all IT services, including support for business led IT projects for Third Party system implementation, such as HR or Finance.
- Embrace the use of Agile working/Kanban boards and Jira/Confluence, as per the wider operating model of T&E.
- Evolve/improve and manage the Starters/Movers/Leavers process (from an IT perspective) so starters and leavers are correctly dealt with from hardware, software, user accounts, AD/security, preferably automatically.
- Lead on any IT audit requirements, ensuring we are meeting our regulatory requirements.
- Identification, resolution, and mitigation of risks from an IT perspective
- Track service performance (incorporating appropriate metrics, KPIs and reporting of those both inward and externally to stakeholders)
- With the IT Security Manager, support in the ongoing maintenance of its ISO27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS),
- Adhere to all relevant ISO27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS) policies, procedures, and requirements always.
The Person
As a highly motivated self-starter, you will be good people leader, possess excellent stakeholder management skills and know what good IT Service look like.
You will be approachable, have strong customer service skills, be resilient, and able to operate in a fast paced environment. The role requires a high level of organisation from an individual that is consistent and leads by example demonstrating creativity, perseverance, and vision.