Lead Service Manager - Ministry of Justice - G7 in Manchester

Location: East Midlands (England), East of England, London (region), North East England, North West England, Scotland, South East England, South West England, Wales, West Midlands (England), Yorkshire and the Humber.

We’re recruiting for a Lead Event Management Service Manager here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Technology Operations team. Technology Operations (Tech Ops) sits at the heart of Justice Digital, ensuring our technology services are stable, secure and continually improving for the 100,000+ users who rely on them across the Ministry of Justice. Tech Ops brings together service management, engineering, monitoring and automation to deliver resilient, high-performing technology.

This role aligns with the Head of IT service management in the Government Digital and Data Framework IT service manager – Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework. The Event Management Service is a new capability that will strengthen how we detect issues, understand service health and prevent disruption. As Lead Event Management Service Manager, you will design and mature this function, establishing a clear approach to monitoring, observability, event correlation and proactive intervention. You will work closely with Service Resilience, Major Incident Management and engineering teams to improve early detection, reduce major incident impact and embed a culture of proactive, data-driven operations. The role also shapes our use of modern operational practices such as automation, service reliability standards, ensuring new and existing services are operationally ready and continually improving.

Key Responsibilities:

• Establish and lead a robust, intelligence-led Event Management Service, aligned with ITIL best practice and Technology Operations governance.
• Strategic thinking – lead the design and implementation of strategy, directing the evaluation of strategies and policies to ensure business requirements are being met.
• Design and maintain clear, effective operating procedures to ensure consistent, high-quality delivery across all service areas.
• Ensure critical services transition into the Event Management framework with defined monitoring standards, ownership, and thresholds.
• Service focus – see the bigger picture by taking groups of services and investigating how to get the best of underlying services.
• Oversee timely detection, categorisation, prioritisation, and escalation of events that could impact business-critical services.
• Lead event correlation and trend analysis to identify patterns and early warning indicators, escalating findings to prevent incidents.
• Collaborate closely with Incident, Problem, and Change Management to enhance service stability, reduce repeat incidents, and improve overall resilience.
• Continual service improvement – lead and develop a team of experts to deliver service improvements.
• Stakeholder relationship management – build long-term strategic relationships and communicate clearly and regularly with stakeholders, supporting mutual needs and commitments while focusing on user needs.
• Ownership & initiative – take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems.
• Technical understanding – show a thorough understanding of the technical concepts required for the role and can explain how these fit into the wider technical landscape.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Line manager support, guidance and mentoring for more junior or new members of staff.
• Contribution to corporate activities such as membership of a project board or internal network.
• Lead activities and knowledge sharing as part of the profession Community of Practice.
• Contribute to / participate in cross-government forums as appropriate.

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!

Person Specification:

• Continual service improvement – analyse current processes, and identify and implement opportunities to optimise them and lead and develop a team of experts to deliver service improvements.
• Ownership & initiative – take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems, focussing on achieving excellent user outcomes.
• Stakeholder Relationship Management (IT Operations) – manage long-term strategic relationships with stakeholders, identifying where new connections need to be made and existing ones nurtured. Also, influence important senior stakeholders and arbitrate when blockers are escalated. Finally, facilitate discussions across high risk and complex areas or projects under constrained timelines.
• Service focus – ensure that service focus is championed within your team and actively recommend its adoption.
• Service management framework knowledge - demonstrate an industry understanding of how to implement the framework into numerous environments.
• Strategic thinking – lead the design and implementation of strategy, directing the evaluation of strategies and policies to ensure business requirements are being met.
• Technical Understanding - show a thorough understanding of the technical concepts required for the role, and can explain how these fit into the wider technical landscape.
• Knowledge of event correlation, monitoring tools, and automation practices.
• Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for [SC] clearance.

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor. Our values are Purpose, Humanity Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace. The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found.