Principle Head of IT Service Management Service Operations - HMRC - SCSp

This pivotal role sits within Chief Digital and Information Officer's (CDIO) Enterprise Live Services (ELS), which oversees operational assurance of all contributory parts of the live IT operation. We have central and local service operations teams across CDIO and this exciting role will lead our central Service Operations, specifically overseeing our 24x7 Customer Experience and Bridge Operations (CEBO), Batch Operations, Centralised Observability, Service Desk and our Employee IT Experience team to deliver co-ordinated mission-critical IT Operations Management for HMRC, operating across our new product and platform operating model.  Amongst a range of other customer services, the CEBO team monitors the HMRC IT service estate through real-time performance measures across a diverse and complex estate acting as our IT 1st-responders: handling incidents, major incidents and linking with service teams. Engaging closely with local incident and problem teams and with customer and delivery groups across CDIO it leads on the stand up of dedicated major incident management (MIM) teams driving major IT incidents through to resolution and provides round-the-clock support to IT systems running 24/7.

We are evolving the scope of the CEBO team, enabling the more advanced, intelligent, and proactive role required across HMRC as our ‘first line of defence’ in preventing and minimising business impact from IT. This role is pivotal as our live IT estate grows more technically complex (by design, as we move from legacy to digital technology). To support this evolution, we have brought our service desk team, and customer experience team into the CEBO team to provide a one-stop-shop for Service Operations across CDIO, serving as a centre of excellence for all service management teams. CDIO is also making significant investments in our Service Central Platform (ServiceNow instance) and transforming - where practical - to a strategic set of monitoring tools (Dynatrace) to modernise our response and prevention capability to IT events.

Implementing our ITIL Practices is critical to our overall awareness too across a complex, everchanging IT service estate, pinpointing intervention moments to ensure that service teams (internal and external third-party suppliers) understand events on the IT services they manage. As a 24/7 service provider, we provide crucial, actionable insight to service teams to effectively manage their services – based on the service design.

If you're passionate about technology, enjoy problem-solving, and thrive in a fast-paced environment, this is the perfect opportunity to make a significant impact on HMRC's digital future.

Job description

The Head of Service Management – Service Operations, has the following responsibilities (not exhaustive):

• Protect Live Service by building, leading and applying our central Service Operations capabilities and services
• Working with the Enterprise Live Services (ELS) senior leadership team and other senior managers across CDIO to maintain and deliver the service-centric vision for how the HMRC IT estate meets HMRCs needs
• Introducing industry recognised process, technology and behaviours to both deliver and manage an effective service management organisation, working primarily with our product and platform teams
• Integrating a wide range of service operations professionals, develop and motivate people within the assigned function, ensuring they perform to their potential, and meet their role objectives
• Set out live service standards for all service management teams, working with other function / sub-functions as required to support delivery to standards, such as our own Service Quality Framework, and challenging levels of service delivery (service specific)
• Oversight of the service operations activities delivered once a service is live and accepted into service
• Direct the implementation of holistic SLA, OLA, XLA and oversight of all service operations teams, working effectively with delivery teams, • Building strong trusting relationships with all CDIO functions to influence and support decision making throughout the end-to-end service lifecycle
• Building strong trusting relationships with all CDIO functions to influence and support decision making
• Ensuring the frameworks, approaches, governance and controls cover the “end to end” IT services are properly controlled – to protect and support the live operations of a broad, complex and constantly changing IT estate – across monitoring and event management, incident management, problem management and service request management practices and capabilities
• Providing leadership and development support to for all roles within the sub-function
• Sub-function: financial and people budget
• Drive the Observability Centre of Excellence and key monitoring and event management capabilities throughout the end-to-end service lifecycle

Accountabilities

The Head of Service Management – Service Operations is accountable for:

• Providing service operations leadership across CDIO across a complex and evolving IT service estate, with many virtual service teams and resolver groups (internal / external third party)
• Ensuring ‘Service Operations’ services are correctly integrated to support performant and available end-to-end technology services based on agreed levels of service and required integration (eg Service Desk)
• Identifying and implementing opportunities to improve how CDIO improves the performance and availability of technology services (lifecycle based)
• Relevant disaster planning – with tested effectiveness.
• Identifying and mitigating risk that has the potential to impact the HMRC's IT Service Estate based on the scope of the sub-function (lifecycle based) and the core observability, incident management and monitoring/event management capabilities
• Directing ELS response to major incident management, and the performance of the Major Incident Management team
• Leading the Service Management - Service Operations team, driving positive behaviours and cultural change in line with HMRC values
• The delivery of ELS’s vision, objectives and key results, including sub-function specific financial and people budgets
• Cultivating strong relationships across the SM&I SLT, other Senior Civil Servants across the CDIO directorate and strategic third parties to support the implementation of the service management vision and strategy
• Ensuring the frameworks, approaches, governance and controls cover the “end to end” IT services are properly controlled – to protect and support the live operations of a broad, complex and constantly changing IT estate – across monitoring and event management, incident management, problem management and service request management practices and capabilities
• Providing leadership and development support to for all roles within the sub-function
• Sub-function financial and people budget
• Observability centre of excellence and key monitoring and event management capability

The overall size of the team is 90-100 people. 

Person specification

The successful applicant will need to demonstrate relevant experience and effective delivery of the following essential criteria:

Essential Criteria:

• Proven service operations delivery experience, managing end-to-end IT support provisions in a service desk environment, including incident, problem, and change management.
• Demonstrable experience to lead and influence stakeholders to drive service-centric vision and strategy
• Proven leadership skills to direct the implementation of holistic service operations and experience level agreements as well as oversight of all service operations teams, working effectively with delivery teams
• Proven understanding of technology and its application to IT operational support services. This includes ITIL, and ITSM toolsets such as ServiceNow and JIRA
• The candidate must be able to identify, assess, and mitigate risks associated with IT service delivery, ensuring the security and reliability of the IT estate.
• Demonstrable experience in developing and implementing financial strategies that align with business objects and drive operational efficiency