Principal Service Desk Analyst - Doxford, SR3 3XP

Position

Principal Service Desk Analyst

Reports to: Service Support Manager

Main purpose of the position

Arriva is one of the largest transport services organisations in Europe, employing more than 60,000 people and delivering more than 2.2 billion passenger journeys across 14 European countries every year. We have strong roots dating back to 1938, an ambitious growth agenda, and a continuously developing relationship with I Squared who acquired Arriva in 2024.

The Principal Service Desk Analyst is a senior technical and operational role within the Service Desk team, responsible for providing expert-level support to end users, acting as a technical escalation point, and contributing to the leadership and development of the Service Desk function. This role combines hands-on service desk responsibilities with mentoring, quality assurance, and line management duties to ensure high standards of service delivery and continuous improvement.

Please note, due to the nature of the role, this role will be part of an on-call rota working 07:00 – 19:00 Mon – Fri and 09:00 – 17:00 Sat & Sun. (07:00 – 19:00) to deliver 24/7 service. 

Direct responsibilities

Operational Support

Act as a first point of contact for IT incidents and service requests via phone, email, live chat, and self-service portals.

Provide advanced troubleshooting and resolution for complex technical issues across platforms including Windows 10/11, Office 365, Active Directory, SCCM/Intune, and remote access tools.

Maintain ownership of high-priority tickets and ensure timely resolution or escalation in line with SLAs.

Technical Escalation & Expertise

Serve as the primary escalation point for Service Desk Analysts on technical issues.

Lead root cause analysis and contribute to problem management processes.

Maintain and share technical knowledge through documentation and training sessions.

Team Leadership & Line Management

Provide day-to-day guidance and mentoring to Service Desk Analysts.

Support onboarding and induction of new team members.

Conduct regular performance check-ins and contribute to development planning.

Assist the Service Support Manager in scheduling, workload balancing, and shift coordination.

Quality & Continuous Improvement

Monitor ticket quality and adherence to service desk processes.

Deliver refresher training and promote best practices in customer service and technical troubleshooting.

Identify opportunities for process improvement and automation.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential

• Proven experience in a senior service desk or technical support role.
• Strong knowledge of ITSM tools and practices.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.Ability to lead by example and foster a collaborative team environment.

Desirable

• Experience with line management or team leadership.
• ITIL Foundation certification.
• Familiarity with enterprise environments and large-scale IT operations.

Key attributes

• Improved Customer Experience, measured in CSAT, Ticket Quality and opportunities for Customers to Self-Serve.
• Enhance the brand reputation of the IT division across Arriva Group.
• Reduce the number of issues escalated to Senior Management.
• Improve first contact resolution rate (reduce the number of incidents escalated to second/third line). Reduction of Aged tickets.
• Training and mentoring Service Desk to reduce skills gaps and ensures a consistent approach is adopted.
• Delivering or exceeding against agreed objectives, KPIs and SLA’s.
• Demonstrates the Arriva Values, and is part of positive change needed to embed service improvements.

Stakeholder relationships

• The IT Service Desk team
• Third Party Suppliers
• Field Support/ Site Engineers
• Information Security
• ITSM Process Analysts and Manager
• Technical Services, Platform Engineering, and Product teams
• Technical Project Managers
• Arriva Operating Companies

This job description sets out the main duties and responsibilities of the job-holder. It does not constitute an exhaustive or comprehensive description of duties and the job holder will be required to carry out any additional tasks as and when requested to do so by their manager.  Responsibilities and duties may also change in light of future business needs and personal development.