Key Roles & Responsibilities

1. IT Service Operations & Governance

Own and manage day‑to‑day IT service delivery across centrally managed Town Councils and designated EM Group entities.
Lead, manage, coach, and performance‑manage centrally deployed IT Officers and IT support staff.
Define, maintain, and enforce standard operating procedures, service runbooks, and escalation paths across all supported entities.
Ensure all incidents, service requests, problems, and changes are logged, tracked, and managed through the central ticketing system (Jira).
Review incident trends, recurring issues, and service bottlenecks; drive preventive and corrective actions.
Prioritise cross‑entity issues and allocate resources to ensure service continuity and stability.

2. Vendor & Contract Operations Management

Act as the single operational authority for IT vendor performance across Town Councils and EM Group operations.
Monitor vendor SLAs, service quality, and response times across multiple business units.
Identify systemic vendor or contractual issues and escalate to HQ IT leadership and Procurement.
Participate in vendor service reviews and provide operational inputs into MA contracts, TCMS‑related arrangements, and EM Group IT contracts.

3. Microsoft 365 & Business Applications Oversight

Ensure consistent delivery of first‑line and second‑line support for Microsoft 365 services across Town Councils and EM Group users.
Oversee IT support for user administration, onboarding/offboarding, access management, and collaboration tools.
Coordinate with HQ Applications and Digital teams for advanced system support, tender specifications, and solution evaluations.
Maintain oversight of dashboards and reports produced by IT Officers, ensuring alignment with EM Group BI and data governance standards.

4. Cybersecurity Policy Enforcement (Operational)

Ensure consistent enforcement of HQ IT and cybersecurity policies across Town Councils and EM Group operations (e.g. MFA, device compliance).
Monitor compliance posture and escalate cyber risks, policy violations, or systemic gaps to HQ Cybersecurity.
Support rollout of cybersecurity awareness initiatives in collaboration with the Cybersecurity Lead.
This role does not own cybersecurity strategy, architecture, or risk acceptance.

5. Stakeholder & Business Engagement

Serve as primary IT service escalation point for Town Council leadership and EM Group business stakeholders.
Operate effectively within a managing‑agent and group‑services model, supporting multiple entities with distinct leadership and priorities.
Manage stakeholder expectations while reinforcing HQ IT governance and service standards.
Provide regular service performance reports, insights, and recommendations to HQ IT leadership.

6. Continuous Improvement & Service Maturity

Drive standardisation of IT support processes, tools, and reporting across Town Councils and EM Group operations.
Define and track key service KPIs (e.g. incident volumes, SLA compliance, user satisfaction, vendor performance).
Identify opportunities for automation, skills uplift, service optimisation, and cost efficiency.
Support phased onboarding of additional Town Councils or EM Group entities into the centralized IT service model.

Required Qualifications & Experience

Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or related discipline.
7–10 years of experience in IT service management or IT operations, with at least 3 years in a leadership role.
Proven experience managing distributed, multi‑site, or shared‑services environments.
Strong working knowledge of ITIL service management practices.
Demonstrated experience in IT vendor and SLA management.
Solid understanding of Microsoft 365 and corporate end‑user support environments.
Experience operating in multi‑stakeholder or regulated environments is highly desirable.

We regret to inform that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

IT Service Manager (Centralised IT Services)