Service Operations Manager in Portsmouth

Are you ready to take command of a high-performing service desk operation, lead exceptional teams, and set the gold standard for MSP Service Operations? This role calls for a decisive, driven, and deeply experienced Service Operations Manager to take ownership of ROCK’s frontline service capability. This isn’t just about keeping the lights on — it’s about transforming how service is delivered, elevating client experience at every touchpoint, and building a culture where every ticket resolved, every SLA met, and every escalation handled is a demonstration of ROCK’s commitment to excellence.

If you thrive in fast-paced environments, lead with empathy and accountability, and know how to get the best out of people across multiple teams, this is your stage.

What You Will Be Doing:

• You’ll be the operational heartbeat across three critical service functions, ensuring each team performs at its peak and together they deliver a seamless, world-class service experience:

• Premier First Response Team: Our elite frontline unit, delivering rapid, high-quality first contact resolution and setting the tone for every client interaction.
• Advanced Support — 2nd Line: Skilled analysts handling a broad range of client requests and incidents with speed, precision, and a client-first mindset.
• Advanced Support — 3rd Line: Technically proficient engineers resolving complex escalations, acting as the backbone of our service desk’s technical capability.

This is your opportunity to shape the operational engine of ROCK’s Service Operations — driving consistency, accountability, and continuous improvement across every tier of support.

Your Key Responsibilities in Action:

• Team Leadership & People Development: Lead, inspire, and develop the Premier First Response Team and both Advanced Support tiers, fostering a culture of ownership, resilience, and relentless client focus. Conduct regular one-to-ones, performance reviews, and skills assessments to ensure every team member is growing, motivated, and set up to succeed. Champion a high-performance culture built on accountability, knowledge sharing, and a genuine commitment to outstanding service. Identify talent, support career progression pathways, and build team capability to meet the evolving demands of the business.
• Day-to-Day Service Desk Operations: Own the day-to-day running of the MSP service desk, ensuring all teams are resourced, focused, and operating at full capacity. Oversee ticket queues, triage workflows, and escalation paths across all support tiers, driving timely and effective resolution. Monitor and enforce SLA compliance, proactively identifying risks and taking decisive action to protect client commitments. Manage shift patterns, scheduling, and on-call rota to ensure consistent coverage and service continuity at all times.
• Technical Understanding, Triage & Remediation: The Service Operations Manager must be more than an operational leader — they must possess a strong technical foundation that enables them to lead with credibility, accelerate resolution, and guide their teams through complex challenges with confidence. Maintain a deep working knowledge of the technology stack underpinning client environments, including infrastructure, networking, cloud platforms, and endpoint management, enabling informed triage and faster escalation decisions. Act as a technical anchor during major incidents and complex escalations — able to quickly assess impact, identify likely root cause, and direct the right resources to resolution. Understand and apply structured triage methodologies across all support tiers, ensuring consistent diagnostic approaches that reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR). Work closely with 3rd line engineers to bridge the gap between technical complexity and operational execution — translating technical findings into clear actions and client communications. Ensure runbooks, escalation procedures, and known-error databases are technically accurate, regularly reviewed, and actively used by teams to drive consistent, repeatable remediation. Champion a culture of technical curiosity — encouraging engineers to understand the ‘why’ behind issues, not just the fix, building deeper capability across the desk over time. Identify patterns in recurring incidents and work with technical leadership to drive root cause elimination, reducing ticket volume and improving platform stability for clients.
• Scaling the Operational Desk: Automation & Systemisation: As ROCK grows, so must the operational model. You will be a key driver in designing and implementing the systems, automations, and processes that allow the service desk to scale efficiently without sacrificing quality or client experience. Develop and execute a scalable operational framework — building processes, workflows, and governance structures that support growth across headcount, client base, and service complexity. Identify and implement automation opportunities across the service desk, including ticket routing, categorisation, alert handling, and first-line response, reducing manual effort and accelerating resolution. Lead the adoption and optimisation of AI-assisted tooling, including intelligent triage, predictive alerting, and self-service/chatbot capabilities, driving measurable improvements in efficiency and client satisfaction. Work with PSA and RMM platforms (e.g. ConnectWise, HaloPSA, Autotask) to build and refine automated workflows, escalation rules, and reporting pipelines that reduce operational friction. Design and maintain a systemised knowledge base — ensuring tribal knowledge is codified into structured, searchable, and continuously improved documentation accessible to all tiers. Define and track operational metrics that reflect desk health at scale, including automation adoption rates, self-resolution rates, and engineer productivity ratios. Partner with technical and product leadership to evaluate new tooling and integrations that drive desk capability, ensuring the operational environment evolves in line with the business. Build onboarding and training frameworks that enable rapid ramp-up of new team members, reducing time-to-productivity and maintaining quality standards as the team scales.
• Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement: Drive continuous improvement across processes, tooling, and workflows, embedding efficiency and best practice at every level of the service desk. Leverage automation and AI-driven tooling to enhance ticket handling, reduce resolution times, and elevate the overall client experience. Develop and maintain operational runbooks, escalation procedures, and service standards to ensure consistency and repeatability. Analyse service desk metrics and reporting data to identify trends, root causes, and opportunities for performance uplift.
• Client Experience & Stakeholder Collaboration: Act as the senior escalation point for complex or high-priority incidents, ensuring swift resolution and clear, proactive client communication. Collaborate closely with account managers, technical teams, and leadership to deliver a unified, consistently excellent client experience. Translate operational performance data into clear, meaningful insight for both internal stakeholders and clients.

What You Need to Succeed:

• A passion for delivering consistent exceptional service at scale.
• Exceptional technical knowledge and understanding, ideally equivalent to 3rd line or specialist level, with the ability to credibly engage across infrastructure, networking, and cloud environments.
• A proven ability to triage and remediate technical challenges — understanding root cause, directing resolution, and building lasting fixes rather than workarounds.
• 3+ years in a service desk management or operations leadership role within an MSP or IT services environment.
• Proven track record of managing multi-tiered support teams, with experience overseeing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line operations.
• Strong understanding of ITIL frameworks, SLA management, and MSP Service Operations models.
• Demonstrable ability to lead, coach, and develop people — building teams that are both high-performing and highly engaged.
• Hands-on experience with PSA and RMM tooling (e.g. ConnectWise, Autotask, HaloPSA) and a strong working knowledge of common MSP toolsets.
• Demonstrated experience in scaling an operational service desk — designing automation workflows, systemising processes, and building frameworks that support growth without sacrificing quality.
• A track record of implementing or optimising automation and AI-driven tooling within a service desk context, with measurable impact on efficiency or resolution times.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities, remain calm under pressure, and inspire confidence in your teams and clients.
• Experience working in a high-growth MSP environment where change is constant and pace is relentless.
• Familiarity with AI-driven service desk tooling, automation workflows, or chatbot/self-service implementations.
• A technical background in infrastructure, networking, or cloud platforms that enables credibility and effective communication with engineering teams.
• Relevant certifications such as ITIL Foundation (or above), or a working knowledge of ITIL practices.