Expertise Centre Manager in London

Descartes unites the people and technology that move the world. The need for efficient, secure, and agile supply chains and logistics operations has become ever more critical and complex. By combining innovative technology, powerful trade intelligence and the reach of our network, Descartes helps get goods, information, transportation assets, and people where they’re needed, when they’re needed.

The Role: Purpose & Impact

As the Expertise Centre Manager, you will lead and develop a remote technical support team serving customers across EMEA. You’ll act as the first point of escalation for complex issues, collaborate cross-functionally with R&D, Professional Services, and Sales, and proactively drive improvements in problem management and service delivery. This role blends people leadership, technical problem-solving, and customer engagement, with direct responsibility for service quality, team performance, and client satisfaction. You’ll also play a key role in customer relationship management by leading service reviews and ensuring that recurring issues are identified, resolved, and prevented.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and motivate a remote technical support team, fostering a strong customer-first mindset
• Act as the primary escalation point for complex or high-impact customer issues
• Ensure all incidents in Freshservice are triaged, assigned, and progressing daily
• Communicate and monitor SLAs and KPIs, driving accountability and continuous improvement
• Identify skills and knowledge gaps; design and implement training and development plans
• Partner with HR to recruit, onboard, and develop new team members
• Collaborate cross-functionally with R&D, Product, Professional Services, and Sales to ensure timely resolution of customer issues
• Develop, maintain, and improve diagnostic and procedural documentation
• Organize and lead regular service review meetings with key clients
• Analyse support trends and data to proactively identify risks and improvement opportunities
• Conduct “lessons learned” reviews following major incidents to strengthen problem management processes
• Provide regular reporting and insights to EMEA leadership
• Participate in an out-of-hours support rota as required

What We’re Looking For

We’re less focused on rigid checklists and more interested in how you think, lead, and learn. You may be a great fit if you bring:

Core Skills & Experience

• Proven experience managing a technical support or client services team
• Strong background in a technical, business-critical environment
• Experience in transportation management, logistics, or supply chain (nice to have)
• Ability to lead calmly and effectively in high-pressure, 24/7 environments
• Strong customer-centric mindset with a solutions-driven approach
• Excellent communication, documentation, and presentation skills
• Experience handling multiple concurrent incidents and competing priorities
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting capabilities, including log file analysis
• Solid IT literacy, including Microsoft Office; familiarity with Windows environments, SQL, XML/XSL, or scripting is advantageous

Aptitudes We Value (Descartes 5+2 Model)

• Smarts: Strong analytical thinking and sound judgment
• Curiosity: A desire to understand complex systems and continuously improve service delivery
• Coachability: Openness to feedback and commitment to personal growth
• Work Ethic: Reliability, ownership, and follow-through in a demanding environment
• Track Record: Evidence of delivering results through people and process improvement
• Responsibility: Accountability for decisions, outcomes, and team performance
• Honesty: Transparency and integrity in customer and internal relationships

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• Opportunity to lead a distributed, high-impact team across EMEA
• Exposure to enterprise-scale, mission-critical technology
• Collaborative, inclusive culture that values trust and accountability
• Ongoing learning and development opportunities
• Flexible working arrangements (remote or office-based)
• A leadership role with real influence on customer experience and service strategy

Join Us

As we scale, we’re looking for new doers, collaborators and innovators to join Descartes in uniting the people and technology that move the world as the Global Leader in Logistics and Supply Chain Technology. We’re entrepreneurial, hardworking, geeky-in-a-good way problem solvers. Guided by our values, we nurture a TEAM focused culture that invests in people and creates opportunities for advancement across a broad spectrum of career paths. We prioritize work-life balance and foster an environment with the space to take ownership, to be heard, and to carve a path for your individual accomplishments to help drive our success. At Descartes, everyone has a voice and the best idea wins, regardless of who makes it. We offer competitive compensation, great benefits, remote and flexible work hours, and the opportunity to join a company on an awesome mission with a great existing team and trajectory.

Descartes also has a deep sense of environmental responsibility. Learn more about how we helped our customers save over 552,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2020 by reducing fuel and paper consumption: Join a team that’s committed to working with customers to conserve resources and enhance sustainability.

If you feel you have 70% of the qualifications we are looking for, and Descartes sounds like the team and the mission you want to be part of, apply now. We can’t promise it will be a fit, but we do promise to consider your experience.

We conduct a mix of in-person and virtual interviews. Virtual interviews are held via Microsoft Teams and are recorded and transcribed. We may utilize AI tools to support our hiring team in notetaking, summarization, and internal training. AI tools are not used in our recruitment process for decision-making purposes. Recordings, transcripts, and notes are used for recruitment, including improvement of our process, and record-keeping purposes. Should you have any questions or concerns about our process, please connect with our hiring team in advance of scheduled interviews.

We are an Equal Employment employer. We do not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, protected status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial, or local law. For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please review our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics at Descartes.com.