Senior Manager, Service & Operations, UKI Studio+

Location: London

At EY, we’re all in to shape your future with confidence. We’ll help you succeed in a globally connected powerhouse of diverse teams and take your career wherever you want it to go. Join EY and help to build a better working world.

The Opportunity

As a Senior Manager in the Service & Operations Practice at EY Studio+ UK, you will play a pivotal leadership role in shaping, delivering, and scaling service innovation and operational transformation for some of the UK's most complex organisations. You will lead multidisciplinary teams, take ownership of large, high value programmes, influence senior client stakeholders, and act as a visible ambassador for EY Studio+ in the market. This is a role for someone who combines strategic clarity with hands on ability — someone who can inspire clients, challenge assumptions, and drive delivery from vision through to implementation.

Who You Are

You will exhibit all core traits required of Studio+ practitioners — curiosity, user centredness, visual and iterative ways of working, and comfort operating within complexity — but at a level where you influence others, set standards, and role model best practice. Operate confidently with Director, Partner, and C suite stakeholders and influence senior decision making. Bring a strong point of view on service strategy, operating model design, and organisational transformation. Be accountable for multiple teams, programmes, or portfolios, ensuring quality, client satisfaction, and commercial performance. Create clarity amid ambiguity, setting direction and shaping delivery approaches for large and complex engagements. Actively contribute to practice growth, proposition development, and market positioning.

Key Responsibilities (Senior Manager Level)

• Lead large, complex, multi workstream service design and transformation programmes, ensuring alignment with client strategy and EY quality standards.
• Act as the primary client relationship owner, shaping the agenda, defining outcomes, and building long term strategic partnerships.
• Challenge senior stakeholders constructively, using insight, data, and storytelling to reframe problems and shift thinking.
• Oversee delivery teams, ensuring progress, risk management, and stakeholder communication across multiple levels.
• Ensure work is implementable, scalable, and commercially viable — not theoretical.
• Build, lead and inspire high performing multidisciplinary teams, providing coaching, direction, and stretch opportunities.
• Create a positive, inclusive team environment where diverse perspectives are valued and psychological safety is established.
• Act as a mentor and role model across the practice, supporting capability development and contributing to the career growth of others.
• Oversee resource planning across engagements and influence talent decisions within the practice.

Practice & Proposition Growth

• Shape and evolve EY Studio+’s service transformation propositions, methods, and thought leadership.
• Lead go to market efforts, support bid activity, and hold accountability for revenue targets and commercial outcomes.
• Build market presence by speaking at events, publishing thought leadership, and cultivating external networks.
• Identify emerging trends across sectors, technology, service innovation, and human centred design, and translate them into opportunity areas for clients and EY.

Commercial & Operational Accountability

• Own commercial management of large programmes (£500k–£2m+), ensuring profitability, scope control, and client value.
• Contribute to forecasting, budgeting, and pipeline planning for the Service & Operations practice.
• Drive operational excellence by advancing consistent ways of working, quality standards, and delivery frameworks across the team.

Skills & Attributes for Success

• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, able to craft and deliver compelling narratives to senior audiences.
• Strong influencing and negotiation skills, able to shape decisions and align diverse stakeholders.
• Ability to simplify complexity and design clear pathways from insight to action and implementation.
• Proven expertise in service design, operating model design, business analysis, customer insight, and transformation delivery.
• Highly developed judgement and decision making abilities, using data, experience, and intuition to make informed choices.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a focus on growth, innovation, and long term impact for clients and the practice.

To Qualify for the Role, You Should Be Able To:

• Demonstrate a track record leading large teams (6–30+).
• Evidence successful delivery of service transformation projects in complex environments (e.g., utilities, government, FMCG).
• Present a strong portfolio of customer centred work, including operating models, data driven insights, and implementation plans.
• Show experience managing large budgets and contributing to practice revenue growth.
• Demonstrate experience winning work — proposal development, client pitching, and deal shaping.
• Articulate EY Studio+ capabilities clearly and confidently to market level clients and partners.
• Bring experience influencing and engaging C suite stakeholders.
• (Optional/maintained) Bring contact centre or operational excellence experience — ideal but not essential.
• Show appetite to learn more technical skills if not already present, and an appetite to learn about AI and its benefits to customers.
• Demonstrate the ability to jump in at the deep end; willingness to roll up your sleeves and get involved.

What Working at EY Offers

• Support, coaching and feedback from some of the most engaging colleagues around.
• Opportunities to develop new skills and accelerate your career.
• The freedom and flexibility to shape your role in ways that work for you.