IT Manager - Desktop Services

Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy with over 20,000 employees across more than 50 countries and 140+ offices. We work across incredible global industries, delivering exciting work that is defining our future and making an important societal impact in the communities we serve.

Overview of the role

As the IT Manager – Desktop Services, reporting to the IT Operations Manager, you will play a critical leadership role in shaping how our global workforce experiences desktop and end‑user support services. You will lead our Desktop Services function, ensuring high‑quality, customer‑focused support across all regions and acting as a key contributor to operational excellence, service resilience, and continuous improvement across the IT estate.

Key responsibilities and duties

• Lead and manage the Desktop Services team, including Team Leaders and Analysts, ensuring high performance, collaboration, and accountability.
• Oversee day‑to‑day delivery of 2nd line support globally, ensuring incidents and requests are resolved efficiently, consistently, and in line with SLAs.
• Own the escalation and resolution of complex technical issues, ensuring effective communication and minimal business disruption.
• Drive continuous improvement by analysing operational data, identifying trends, and implementing enhancements to tools, processes, and knowledge management.
• Ensure Desktop Services activities align with operational governance, compliance obligations, and risk controls.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to support service transitions, technology deployments, and project deliverables.
• Maintain strong awareness of end‑user technologies, platforms, and best practices to support decision‑making across desktop and mobility services.
• Promote a customer‑centric approach, ensuring user satisfaction, transparency, and responsiveness in all Desktop Services interactions.
• Develop and maintain a high‑quality knowledge base and documentation library to support shift‑left and self‑service initiatives.
• Report service performance, risks, and operational insights clearly and proactively to IT leadership and stakeholders.

Personal attributes

• Demonstrates strong leadership presence, fostering trust, confidence, and collaboration.
• Communicates clearly with technical and non‑technical stakeholders, adjusting style as needed.
• Maintains composure under pressure, making sound decisions during critical escalations.
• Builds strong relationships across teams, driving collective success and shared outcomes.
• Applies a continuous improvement mindset and proactively seeks opportunities to optimise services.
• Committed to people development, inclusion, wellbeing, and creating a positive team culture.

Key performance indicators

• Incident resolution efficiency: reduced mean time to resolution and improved escalations.
• Service quality: achievement of SLA targets and improvements in customer satisfaction (CSAT/NPS).
• Operational performance: monitoring ticket volumes, identifying trends, and implementing corrective actions.
• Knowledge and process maturity: increased adoption of shift‑left, knowledge base utilisation, and workflow efficiency.
• Employee engagement: positive feedback from team surveys and development conversations.

Candidate specification

Essential:

• Proven experience leading desktop/support teams in a complex, global IT environment.
• Strong operational leadership and team management skills across distributed locations.
• Deep understanding of end‑user technologies, device management, troubleshooting, and support best practices.
• Experience with ITIL‑based service management and operational governance.
• Effective stakeholder engagement and communication skills across all organisational levels.
• Demonstrated ability to manage escalations, prioritise workload, and maintain service continuity.

Desirable:

• Professional certification in IT Service Management (ITIL, SDI) or equivalent.
• Experience working with global or multi‑site teams.
• Familiarity with modern endpoint management platforms such as Intune, SCCM, or equivalent.
• Experience with ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow for workflow, routing, and reporting.
• Understanding IT operations, security, compliance, and continuous improvement frameworks.

Agile working

At Mott MacDonald, we believe it makes business sense for you and your manager to choose how you can work most effectively to meet your client, team, and personal commitments. We offer a hybrid working policy that embraces your well‑being, flexibility, and trust.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

We put equality, diversity, and inclusion at the heart of our business, seeking to promote fair employment procedures and practices to ensure equal opportunities for all.

Accessibility

We want you to perform your best at every stage in the recruitment process. If you are disabled or need any support to enable you to apply or attend an interview, please contact us and we will talk to you about how we can support you.

Benefits

• Financial wellbeing: We match employee pension contributions between 4.5% and 7%. Life assurance equal up to 4 × your basic salary, with an option to increase the level of cover to 6 × your salary.
• Employee Ownership: Our employee ownership model means no external investors, just us, creating a culture of shared success.
• Health and wellbeing: Private medical insurance for all UK colleagues. Health cash plan to support you with everyday health costs and treatments.
• Lifestyle: A minimum of 33‑35 days holiday each year, inclusive of public holidays and dependent on level.
• Enhanced family and carers leave: Enhanced family leave policies, including 26 weeks paid maternity and adoption leave, and two weeks paid paternity/partner leave.
• Learning and development: Primary annual professional institution subscription.

Join a wide range of groups including our Advanced Employee Networks which support our LGBTQ+, gender, race and ethnicity, disability, and parents/carers communities.

Apply now, or for more information about our application process, click here.