Service Assurance Lead | Birmingham, United Kingdom

The Service Assurance Lead provides governance, oversight, and assurance across the entire Workplace Desktop Apps (WDA) portfolio. Acting as the “right hand” to the WDA Lead, the role ensures that services delivered by vendors and internal teams are compliant, transparent, measurable, and continuously improving.

The role bridges Portfolio Owners, technical teams, and external service providers, maintaining alignment across all service management processes, performance expectations, and operational standards.

Your Responsibilities

Governance & Oversight

• Oversee vendor and internally delivered WDA services, ensuring consistency, compliance, and operational excellence.
• Drive adoption of core ITSM processes including change, incident, problem, knowledge, and service level management.
• Coordinate governance forums and ensure actions, decisions, and outcomes are effectively managed.

Risk, Issue & Compliance Management

• Manage portfolio risks, issues, and compliance requirements across the WDA landscape.
• Ensure adherence to SLA/KPI commitments and relevant governance frameworks.
• Escalate risks proactively and provide leadership with timely visibility and recommendations.

Monitor vendor performance against SLAs, KPIs, contractual obligations, and service outcomes.

• Partner with vendors and stakeholders to implement corrective actions and continuous improvements.

Reporting, Insights & Communication

• Deliver service assurance reporting, dashboards, and leadership insights to support informed decision-making.
• Act as a key liaison between the WDA Lead, Portfolio Owners, vendors, and technical teams.
• Identify and drive opportunities to improve processes, governance, tools, and collaboration.
• Work with CSI and operational teams to deliver measurable service enhancements.

Strategic Support to WDA Lead

• Support strategic planning, operating model development, organizational readiness, and stakeholder alignment.
• Provide trusted guidance and actionable insights to enable effective decision-making.

Your Background

• Experience within large, complex, and global organizations, with a proven record of experience in financial management, application management, IT portfolio management and/or technology cost governance.
• Demonstrated expertise in project and/or program management, with certifications such as ITIL 4, Prince2, Prince, Agile, or similar global IT frameworks.
• Familiarity with vendor management, contract awareness, and SLA governance.
• Strong track record in cross-functional leadership, collaborating across Procurement, Legal, Finance, Business Units, and Portfolio Owners to align strategy and execution.
• Strong understanding of IT service management (ITSM) and IT governance.
• Ability to work cross‑functionally, translating between business, technical, and vendor viewpoints.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Ability to work in a complex, global organization with multiple stakeholders.
• Build strong relationships across business, IT, finance, compliance, architecture, and vendor communities.
• Communicate governance, strategy, performance, and lifecycle decisions clearly and effectively.
• Manage stakeholder expectations, escalations, and conflict resolution activities.
• Influence leaders and teams to drive alignment, governance adoption, and successful change outcomes.
• Coordinate communications across internal and external service partners.
• Operates alongside Technical PM and Business PM roles within the Service Assurance Team (SAT).
• Supports Workplace Desktop Applications as a central governance, oversight, and service assurance function.

More About Us

At Hitachi Energy, we are advancing a sustainable energy future for all. We bring power to homes, schools, hospitals, and industries, working with customers and partners to pioneer technologies and enable the digital transformation required to accelerate the energy transition. Join us and be part of a diverse, collaborative, and innovative team shaping the future of energy.

We are a global leader in electrification, powering the electricity era to meet the energy demands of today, and the next 25 years. As the energy arm of Hitachi Group, over three billion people depend on our pioneering, mission-critical technologies to power their daily lives.

With over a century of innovation, we are addressing the most urgent energy challenge of our time: driving the evolution of the world’s energy system to ensure abundant, secure, affordable, and sustainable power for today’s generation and the next.

With an unparalleled installed base in over 140 countries, we are the grid ecosystem partner across the utility, industry, data center, and transportation sectors. Headquartered in Switzerland, we employ over 56,000 people in 60 countries and generate revenues of around $20 billion USD.