Senior Service Manager – Operations & Maintenance

Reporting to: Head of service – UK

Location: London – Heathrow

Contract Type: Permanent

Introduction to role

The Senior Service Manager – Operations & Maintenance is a pivotal leadership role within the Vanderlande UK Airports Leadership Team. Working closely with the Head of service for Heathrow, you will be responsible for both tactical and strategic leadership that drives the service vision forward while directly contributing to commercial growth, customer value expansion, and operational innovation.

You will act as a senior lead to both internal and external stakeholders, with accountability for delivering service excellence, influencing future strategy, and enabling long-term customer success.

Role Responsibilities

You will provide strong, visible leadership to the Service Teams, including building and transforming teams and embedding a high-performance, accountable culture across all levels. You will ensure efficient and effective controls are in place to consistently deliver operational confidence, service excellence, and financial performance. You will also ensure strategic risk management and take ownership of driving growth through proactive opportunity realisation.

Your responsibilities and activities will include:

• Deliver outstanding services to our customers throughout the lifecycle, building senior-level, trust-based relationships across the internal and external stakeholder chain.
• Lead, mentor, coach, and foster a culture of accountability with a direct team of 4 Service Managers responsible for a team of approximately 300. Drive strategic workforce planning, including recruitment, succession planning, leadership development, and long-term capability growth.
• Implement the service strategy and roadmap, influencing multi-year service direction in alignment with Vanderlande’s global strategy and the objectives of our delivery partners.
• Maintain clear governance of contract performance across cost, asset management, performance, compliance, risk, value realisation, and HSEQS targets.
• Take commercial ownership of contract profitability by identifying and securing upsell opportunities, efficiency gains, and service improvements that contribute to order intake and margin growth.
• Responsible for executing our service proposition to deliver exceptional performance by setting clear objectives and targets, seasonal planning, and incident management, including robust testing of operational readiness across all delivery teams.
• Through leadership and engagement, define, support, and sponsor outcome-based transformation, focusing on enhancing efficiency and effectiveness to achieve Operational Excellence, with a focus on safety.
• Monitor and take actions to improve key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and identify opportunities for optimisation across the Operations and Maintenance remit.
• Ensure active participation in the (early) sales and project phases to support contract growth, shape new service models, and enable a smooth service takeover.
• Use service transformation tools and technology innovations to enhance our operational delivery model, including automation, data-driven insights, and supply chain improvements.
• Act as a senior cover to the Service Director and other leaders, contributing to business planning, strategic investment discussions, and operational delivery.
• Represent Heathrow as a centre of excellence, mentoring service leaders across the partnership and shape global standards.

Role Qualification and Skills

• You’ll have experience in operations and leadership, ideally within a customer-centric business.
• You are a strong communicator who carefully considers your internal and external audience and positions information accordingly, leading to more meaningful relationships, understanding, success, and productivity.
• You enjoy building relationships in a high-performance environment and have an adaptable and proactive leadership style.
• You have the skills to adapt to rapid changes and are used to consistently meeting or exceeding set targets.
• You have previous experience managing and motivating large teams within a large-scale, complex, and dynamic operational environment, including Industrial Relations experience.
• A motivated, driven, resilient individual who can influence people at all levels and, in turn, develop effective working relationships which promote teamwork.
• Able to manage all aspects of your direct reports: welfare, safety, objectives, career planning, discipline, and training.
• You have an innovative approach to problem-solving. You are well-versed in using continuous improvement tools and methodologies supported by quality data in our ongoing pursuit to improve our processes and overall service offerings.
• Adaptable and with a passion for driving positive change.
• You see the value in seeking innovative technical solutions.
• Experienced in Service and Contract Management.
• Demonstrates strong operations and change management skills.
• You establish and work with a network quickly to deliver promptly, focusing on Safety, Service, and Quality.

What we offer

• 28 days of annual leave (excluding public holidays)
• Bupa Medical Cover
• YuLife – Wellbeing membership with fast access to GP appointments, promotion of health and wellbeing along with daily quests to gain Yucoins that can be swapped for shopping vouchers
• Perkbox includes things such as free eye tests at Specsavers including discounts on Glasses, free cinema vouchers and a weekly free coffee from Nero. Along with hundreds of savings on day-to-day shopping, trips etc.
• A challenging work environment with lots of opportunities of career progression.
• Cycle to work scheme
• Pension with Aviva

Diversity & Inclusion

Vanderlande is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Qualifies applicants will be considered without regards to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age marital status or disability status. If you feel there is a barrier that potentially prevents you from applying, we are always happy to discuss or explore, any reasonable adjustments can be made to support your application.

#J-18808-Ljbffr