Senior IT Service Delivery Manager

Lead the day-to-day delivery of managed IT services, ensuring reliable operations, effective technical coordination and high customer satisfaction. This role is the primary operational contact for customers and coordinates internal teams, delivery partners and technology vendors.

Role purpose

Lead the day-to-day delivery of managed IT services, ensuring reliable operations, effective technical coordination and high customer satisfaction. The Senior IT Service Delivery Manager acts as the primary operational contact for customers and coordinates internal teams, delivery partners and technology vendors to deliver services within agreed scope and service levels.

Key Responsibilities

• Coordinate services across business applications, integrations, infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity and service desk operations.
• Provide delivery leadership and technical coordination for application and integration support teams.
• Translate customer priorities into clear delivery plans, responsibilities and actions.
• Ensure appropriate support coverage, specialist availability and continuity arrangements.
• Manage service performance against agreed scope, service levels and operating procedures.
• Coordinate delivery partners, incidents, risks, capacity and corrective actions within a unified service model.
• Resolve cross-team dependencies and maintain clear ownership of service issues.
• Drive vendor escalations through to service restoration or an agreed workaround.
• Lead ITIL-aligned incident, problem, change, release, request, configuration and knowledge-management processes.
• Coordinate major incidents, including technical response, stakeholder communication and escalation.
• Ensure recurring and high-impact incidents receive root-cause analysis and corrective action.
• Oversee change assessment, approvals, scheduling and post-implementation reviews.
• Maintain accurate service records through the designated IT service management platform.
• Lead operational service meetings and contribute to management reviews.
• Prepare service reports covering performance, availability, incidents, changes, risks and improvement actions.
• Maintain clear records of issues, dependencies, decisions and actions.
• Escalate matters requiring customer decisions or senior management intervention.
• Coordinate the transition of services into a structured managed-service operating model.
• Establish service ownership, support procedures and performance baselines.
• Oversee knowledge transfer, onboarding, shadowing and readiness assessments.
• Ensure operational knowledge is captured in runbooks and knowledge articles.
• Confirm service readiness against agreed acceptance criteria.
• Set clear priorities and responsibilities for delivery teams.
• Coordinate shared specialists according to operational needs.
• Identify capability gaps and support training and development plans.
• Reduce dependency on individuals through documentation and cross-training.
• Maintain and deliver an agreed continual service improvement plan.
• Distinguish contracted services from additional requests and project work.
• Assess the impact of new demands on service quality, capacity and cost.
• Route scope changes through the appropriate approval process.
• Ensure delivery teams follow applicable security, access and data-handling requirements.
• Escalate operational and commercial risks without making unauthorised commitments.
  
  

Measures of Success

• Achievement of agreed service levels and customer satisfaction targets.
• Effective incident management and timely stakeholder communication.
• Accurate reporting and timely closure of agreed actions.
• Successful service transitions and operational readiness.
• Clear accountability across delivery teams and partners.
• Reduced repeat incidents and improved service resilience.
• Delivery of agreed improvements within scope and budget.
  
  

Qualifications & Experience

• Proven experience managing multi-tower IT managed services for enterprise customers.
• Strong understanding of business applications, integrations and their infrastructure and security dependencies.
• Experience coordinating internal teams, delivery partners and third-party vendors.
• Demonstrated ability to lead major incidents, service transitions and operational governance.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL principles, SLAs, service reporting and change control.
• Sufficient technical depth to assess delivery risks, challenge technical plans and coordinate specialists.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, problem-solving and prioritisation skills.
• Ability to balance customer expectations, service quality and commercial discipline.
  
  

Must Have

• Bachelor's degree in IT, computer science, engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• ITIL 4 Foundation certification; advanced ITIL qualifications are an advantage.
• Experience with enterprise applications, cloud environments and integration platforms is mandatory.
• Experience managing onsite and remote delivery teams is mandatory.
  
  

Working Requirements

The role requires regular onsite presence, with participation in agreed out-of-hours escalation arrangements, planned maintenance and peak-period support.