Design Services Manager in Crawley

A leading utilities company working within Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) seeks an experienced forward-thinking and proactive Service Design & Transition Manager to join a growing team to cope with the expanding project and programme portfolio, through large investment that will have a massive impact on the local community and environment.

As the Service Design and Transition Manager, you will be responsible for ensuring the effective design and seamless transition of new or changed services into operational environments. This role focuses on designing services that meet business and user requirements, ensuring operational readiness and delivering end-to-end service transition processes within Digital IT Projects while adhering to the organisation's governance frameworks.

Key accountabilities for the Service Design & Transition Manager / Executive, within Service Design activities (40% of the role):

• Define Roles and Responsibilities for Project and Business throughout Project Lifecycle.
• Review gathered requirements and consult with relevant teams to ascertain achievability.
• Work with support teams in Kick-off Meeting to Scope high-level Support.
• Work with support teams to understand ongoing resource profile/skills needed.
• Develop the Service TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
• Agree toolset needed to provide alerting/monitoring.
• Agree Service Level Agreements ensuring that the business requirements align with Digital/3rd Party support capability.
• Create and maintain the Service Design Package to include consideration of capacity, availability, monitoring/alerting, resource and running costs throughout the service lifecycle.
• Ensure service designs meet business objectives, operational requirements, and user needs.
• Ensure service architecture aligns with existing Digital IT landscapes and operational capabilities.
• Identify and address gaps in service processes, systems, or resources to ensure successful delivery.
• Define Service Transition Plan.
• Participate in design reviews to validate service readiness.

Key accountabilities for the Service Design & Transition Manager / Executive, within Service Transition activities (60% of the role):

• Deliver and govern the end-to-end Service Transition process for allocated projects, ensuring compliance with agreed templates and governance frameworks.
• Ensure smooth handover of services from project delivery to operational support, avoiding gaps in service provision.
• Provide expert advice on Service Transition processes to Project Managers.
• Act as key point of contact between Project Managers and stakeholders to ensure alignment of service requirements.
• Identify, document, and help mitigate risks and issues related to service delivery, contributing to the Project and Risk register.
• Manage service Transition elements of the project RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies).
• Assure evidence from the Project Manager that testing against the business requirements has been completed and approved.
• Coordinate and manage Internal Service Acceptance Boards (SAB).
• Support Early Life Support (ELS) with the project manager and all mandatory stakeholders.
• Manage the Acceptance into Service (AIS) process, ensuring post-go-live actions are fully addressed.

Skills & Competencies for the Service Design & Transition Manager / Executive position:

• Self-starter able to work effectively with minimal supervision.
• Strong understanding of ITIL practices, particularly Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operations.
• Experience in delivering service design and transition activities within IT Projects.
• Expertise in developing Service Support Models, SLAs, OLAs and process workflows.
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and facilitation skills.
• Familiarity with project governance processes and RAID management.
• Experience with operational readiness assessments and service assurance activities.