Vice President – Service Management & Operations

Reporting to the SVP Technology Platforms, this is a pivotal role supporting the strategic intent of the Digital & IT organisation. Technology Platforms is a critical function, at the heart of the Digital & IT Transformation agenda, building, running and maintaining cyber safe, resilient, compliant, digital and highly available infrastructure and end-user centric services. We strive to shift operational services to a highly automated, intelligent, predictive and ultimately invisible state.

Operating in a fast paced, large scale and complex technology landscape, the Technology Platforms function enables our global business to operate 24/7 365 days a year. The VP Service Management & Operation is a global role accountable for establishing and maintaining world-class service management practices and operational excellence throughout the organisation. This role drives the implementation of ITIL-aligned service management processes while fostering a culture of reliability, continuous improvement, and customer-centricity. The position involves operational oversight of service management disciplines and operations teams, ensuring transparent service delivery with high availability standards and rapid incident resolution. The role manages and limits operational risk to the business whilst delivering measurable business value through optimised service operations.

Rolls-Royce is one of the most enduring and iconic brands in the world and has been at the forefront of innovation for over a century. We design, build and service systems that provide critical power to customers where safety and reliability are paramount. We are proud to be a force for progress, powering, protecting and connecting people everywhere. We want to ensure that the excellence and ingenuity that has shaped our history continues into our future and we need people like you to come and join us on this.

We’ll provide an environment of caring and belonging where you can be yourself. An inclusive, innovative culture that invests in you, gives you access to an incredible breadth and depth of opportunities where you can grow your career and make a difference.

What we offer

We offer excellent development opportunities, a competitive salary, and exceptional benefits. These include bonus, employee support assistance and employee discounts. Your needs are as unique as you are. Hybrid working is a way in which our people can balance their time between the office, home, or another remote location. It’s a locally managed and flexed informal discretionary arrangement. As a minimum we’re all expected to attend the workplace for collaboration and other specific reasons, on average three days per week.

What you will be doing

• Deliver advanced service desk operations, driving first time fix, exceptional call handling experience and reducing overall incident volumes and time to resolve.
• Major incident management with diligent command and control, including executive communication, gold command coordination, post-incident reviews and corrective action plans.
• Robust IT Operations centre services, ensuring effective 24/7 incident response coordination, enabling rapid restoration of critical business services, enhanced monitoring and an overall reduction in incidents.
• Problem management driving systematic identification and resolution of underlying service issues, ultimately reducing recurring incidents.
• Customer communication during service disruptions, including status page updates and stakeholder notifications.
• Cross-functional collaboration with product and technology owners to embed reliability practices and reduce incident frequency.
• Request management and fulfilment, driving greater catalogue automation and fulfilment times.
• Regional and site-based IT Service Management support teams, focussed on proactive engagement with the business to understand business needs, proactive identification of IT issues and prompt resolution.
• Execute the business engagement framework, designed to build confidence and demonstrate that a clear understanding of IT issues and robust plans for quick resolution as well as long term sustainable solutions.
• Run and support strategic supplier performance reviews, ensuring contractual adherence, value for money and cost optimisation.
• Drive continuous service improvement across all supplier ITIL functions, focussed on prevention, consistency, diligence and pace.

Leadership and People Development

• Build an effective and motivational team environment, aligning behaviours, values and performance expectations across all service management functions.
• Sustain high employee engagement throughout teams and embed a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence.
• Deploy appropriate talent development strategies to ensure the best possible talent pipeline for current and future service management needs.
• Work as part of the Tech Platforms leadership team to achieve collective success and help shape the long-term direction of service operations.
• Ensure effective communication at all levels, both internally and externally, providing regular briefings on service performance, incidents, and improvement initiatives.

Who we’re looking for

Essential Requirements

• Demonstrable working experience in ITIL service management practices and operational excellence.
• Significant line management with experience of leading technical operations teams.
• Proven experience in the engineering and manufacturing industry.
• Proven leadership and management skills with the ability to optimise team performance during high-pressure incident scenarios.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to engage, negotiate and manage relationships with senior executives, business leaders, and external vendors.
• The ability to work with and communicate effectively across all levels within the organisation - exceptional verbal and written communication skills are necessary to translate complex technical information for non-technical stakeholders, including executives and business leaders.
• Strong attention to detail with meticulous organisational skills to manage schedules, documentation, and reporting.
• Demonstrable experience of working in a large scale, complex and fast paced environment.
• Demonstrable experience acting as a trusted advisor and operational partner with major business functions during service disruptions and strategic planning.
• Demonstrate operational leadership by managing and monitoring service quality, incident response effectiveness, and team performance.
• ITIL qualified, with a deep understanding of ITIL service management principles, incident/problem management, change control, and service level management.
• Strong grasp of modern monitoring and observability platforms, incident management tools, and automation technologies.
• Experience with service management tools, ServiceNow specifically.
• Understanding of cloud platforms and distributed systems architecture for effective service management.
• Data-driven decision making with the ability to analyse service metrics and demonstrate the value of operational improvements.
• The role will require UK SC clearance as a minimum.

Preferred Qualifications

• ITIL v4 qualified.
• Experienced and accustomed to working within the strict boundaries set by defence organisations and integrators.
• Agile and DevOps methodologies integration with service management practices.
• Business continuity and disaster recovery planning experience.

At Rolls-Royce we put safety first, do the right thing, keep it simple and make a difference. These principles form the behaviours that guide us and are an essential component of our assessment process. They are the fundamental qualities that we seek for all roles.

We are an equal opportunities employer.