IT Service Manager (High-growth, fast-paced, M&A environment. MSP and Projects focus)

Our client is a PE-backed, high-growth and acquisitive organisation. They are based in central London with a requirement to be in the office 4 days per week.

The Role

They are looking for an IT Service Manager who can act as the operational right hand to the Head of IT Services. This is a management and coordination role, not a technical support one, reporting to the Head of IT Services and working alongside the Application Portfolio Manager (APM) to deliver the IT function’s mandate. Where the Head sets the direction and owns the strategy, you would make sure the machine runs. You would need to be able to keep the wheels on when the Head is out: stepping into vendor reviews, progressing acquisition integrations, or briefing stakeholders on project status. You should also be close enough to the APM’s work to cover the essentials if they are unavailable. This is a role that earns trust through breadth, reliability, and the ability to operate independently. IT is part of a broader technology function that includes product management, software engineering, data, and automation. You would work alongside product managers and software delivery engineers who use agile, discovery-led approaches to solve business problems. This is not a siloed IT department; the opportunity is to learn from and contribute to how the wider technology team works.

The MSP maintains a presence at the office. Your job would be to work with them as a partner, not replace them: guiding priorities, unblocking issues, making decisions on the bigger problems, and ensuring what they deliver meets the standard expected. You would build a strong working relationship with their team both in London and at their headquarters.

Key Responsibilities

• Project Delivery & Acquisition Integration
• Stakeholder Engagement & Communication
• Commercial Administration & Asset Management

Required Experience

Must Have

• Demonstrable experience in IT service management, vendor management, or a closely related discipline involving coordinated service delivery across multiple sites in organisations of 500+ employees, ideally with experience of rapid growth or acquisition-driven scaling.
• Proven ability to manage projects and structured delivery through third-party providers: you know how to brief a vendor, track delivery, escalate effectively, and hold people to account without doing the technical work yourself.
• Experience managing or contributing to MSP or outsourced IT relationships, including SLA monitoring, performance review, and operational coordination.
• Strong stakeholder communication skills: you can keep non-technical audiences informed, explain what is happening and why, and represent IT credibly in meetings with senior business leaders.
• Enough technical understanding to ask the right questions, spot when something does not add up, and make sound judgement calls on infrastructure, device, and integration decisions, without needing to implement the fix yourself.
• Documentation discipline: you write things down, keep records current, and produce clear reporting without being asked.

Nice to Have

• ITIL certification or equivalent service management framework experience.
• Experience in PE-backed, acquisition-heavy, or high-growth environments where the pace of change is relentless and the quality bar is high.
• M&A integration experience, particularly the IT workstream of onboarding acquired businesses onto a standard technology platform.
• Security and incident management literacy: familiarity with incident response processes, root-cause analysis, and the operational interface between IT service management and cyber security functions (e.g. MDR, SOC).
• Microsoft 365 administration and licensing at scale; familiarity with Intune, Entra ID, and SaaS cost governance.
• Property, distributed retail, franchise, or multi-site service business experience.
• Application portfolio management exposure: enough familiarity with software lifecycle, vendor onboarding, and licence management to cover for the APM when needed.