Lead IT Service Manager in Burnley

Pay of £75,026, plus 28.97% employer pension contributions, hybrid working, flexible hours, and great work-life balance.

Are you ready to lead a critical digital service that supports thousands of colleagues every day? Join DWP Mobile Services as a Lead IT Service Manager and play a key role in shaping how a high-profile, business-critical service is delivered, improved, and trusted across the organisation. DWP Mobile Services enables more than 18,000 colleagues to work securely and effectively wherever they are, and this role places you at the centre of that capability.

As Lead IT Service Manager, you will set the strategic direction for the service ensuring it is reliable, resilient and easy to use. Working within a multidisciplinary product team and alongside external suppliers, you will oversee service performance, risk and demand using data and insight to drive continuous improvement across incident problem change and release management. You will play a key role in ensuring that new and enhanced features transition smoothly into live service maintaining a consistent and high-quality user experience.

The role also involves establishing strong governance, building effective stakeholder relationships and acting as a senior escalation point when required. This is a senior leadership role with real impact where your expertise will help ensure colleagues can access secure and effective mobile services supporting DWP in delivering essential public services.

You and your role: As Lead IT Service Manager, you will lead service management for DWP Mobile Services ensuring colleagues receive a reliable, resilient and high-quality service. You will be responsible for setting the strategy and direction for service management and delivery ensuring clear ownership and effective governance are in place. You will lead and develop a high-performing team, managing capacity and resources to meet service demand and continuously improving team performance.

You will design and maintain the service support model covering people, process, policy and technology ensuring alignment with ITSM standards and DWP ways of working. You will also be accountable for service performance against SLAs, OLAs and XLAs using data insight and reporting to enhance reliability and improve the overall user experience.

In addition, you will embed and assure effective ITSM practices across incident, problem, change and release management including testing and service assurance. You will work closely with the Product Team and suppliers to ensure new and enhanced features transition smoothly into live service and are effectively adopted into business as usual operations. You will set the strategic direction for the service, provide assurance and drive continuous improvement across the full service lifecycle. You will build strong stakeholder and supplier relationships acting as a key escalation point and driving continuous service improvement.

While not essential, it would be beneficial to hold an ITIL v4 Managing Professional qualification when starting in the role.

What skills, knowledge and experience will you need?

• Proven experience managing IT products and services in live environments within large, complex IT Service Management landscapes in product-based digital organisations.
• Strong background in applying Service Management frameworks (e.g. ITIL) to define, implement, and maintain processes, policies, strategies, standards, and governance with key stakeholders.
• Demonstrated expertise in end-to-end service management, including leading the design and delivery of scalable operating models that ensure resilient, high-quality services across multi-supplier environments.
• Broad knowledge of technologies and solutions across the full service lifecycle.
• Effective leadership skills with a focus on enhancing team performance, driving continuous improvement, and building organisational capability.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing capabilities, with a consistent record of delivering successful outcomes through effective implementation, negotiation, and collaboration at all organisational levels.

Location: You'll join us in one of our brilliant digital hubs in Blackpool or Manchester.

Hybrid Working: We work a hybrid model – you'll spend some time working at home and some time collaborating face to face in a hub.

Pay: We offer competitive pay of £75,026.

Pension: You'll get a brilliant civil service pension with employer contributions of 28.97%, worth £21,735 per year.

Holidays: A generous leave package starting at 25 days rising to 30 days over time. You can also take up to 3 extra days off a month on flexi-time. You'll also get all the usual public holidays.

We have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

• Flexible working including flexible hours and flex-friendly policies.
• Time off volunteering and charitable giving.
• Bring your authentic self to work with 'I Can Be Me in DWP'.
• Discounts and savings on shopping, fun days out and more.
• Interest-free loans to buy a bike or a season ticket, so it's even easier for you to get to work and start making a difference.
• Sports and social activities.
• Professional development, coaching, mentoring and career progression opportunities.

And we have an award-winning environment and culture. DWP have been recognised as 2024 Diversity Employer of the Year at the Computing Women in Tech Excellence awards, Diverse and Inclusive Leadership at Digital Leaders Awards 2024, Commended as Best Place to Work in Digital category in the Computing Digital Technology Leaders awards 2025, Recognised as one of the Best Public Sector Employers at 2025 Women In Tech Employer Awards.