Head of Service Operations

Save the Children UK is looking for an experienced and collaborative leader to join us as Head of Service Operations. In this role, you will shape how colleagues across the organisation experience and use digital, data and technology services, working closely with senior leaders, technical teams and partners to ensure our services are accessible, effective and deliver maximum impact for children. Note, internally, this role is referred to as Head of Customer Enablement, reflecting our customer-centric approach.

About us

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach.

About the role

As Head of Customer Enablement, you will lead the function responsible for ensuring Save the Children colleagues receive reliable, high-quality and accessible digital, data and technology services. You will combine strong service management leadership with a strategic focus on customer enablement, ensuring teams are supported, confident and equipped to use technology effectively. As part of the DDaT senior leadership team, you will oversee service delivery, supplier relationships, budgets and continual service improvement, while acting as a trusted partner to stakeholders across the organisation.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the Customer Enablement function, owning service management processes and ensuring services are designed and delivered to maximise customer value.
• Act as a strong customer advocate for digital, data and technology, ensuring a consistently high-quality service experience across the organisation.
• Develop and grow the Service Desk and Customer Support functions, identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, user experience and engagement.
• Take ownership of major incidents, coordinating teams and stakeholders to minimise impact and ensure clear, timely communication.
• Oversee supplier management, contracts, asset and licence management, procurement processes and budget control.
• Drive continual service improvement through customer insight, service reporting and the delivery of service improvement plans and operational projects.

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• Proven experience in IT service management methodologies such as ITIL and COBIT with experience operating in complex environments.
• A track record of leading customer-focused IT services, service desks or support functions, with a strong emphasis on service quality and user experience and service performance monitoring.
• Experience managing budgets, procurement, suppliers and contracts, ensuring best value, compliance and effective risk management.
• Strong leadership and people management capability, with experience building, developing and empowering high-performing teams.
• Proven project management skills with a track record of identifying, scoping and delivering small to mid-size initiatives that improve service quality, customer experience or adoption of technology.
• Broad knowledge of software, operating systems, and cloud services with demonstrable experience in software licensing and asset management.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences and act as a trusted business partner.
• A strategic, improvement-focused mindset, balancing day-to-day operational delivery with longer-term customer enablement and service transformation goals.
• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values.

What we offer you

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance. We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work. We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day.

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately, once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but at times you will be required to come to your contracted office (usually between 2–4 days per month, depending on the needs of your role, team, or service). For many roles, this is likely to be the minimum required to deliver impact. This will be discussed and agreed with your manager/team and we encourage candidates to discuss our ways of working in more detail at interview stage.

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense.

Out of hours working

From time to time, you may be asked to work outside normal business hours, such as in the evening or at the weekend, to support activities like system upgrades or maintenance. This is expected to be infrequent (usually no more than four times a year) and we’ll always give you as much notice as possible. In exceptional situations, such as a major emergency, humanitarian response, cyber attack, or total system failure, you may be asked to temporarily adjust your working hours to help manage the situation.

Flexible Working

We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world.

This is the reason why we are all here.

Salary Structure

Save the Children is committed to paying staff in a fair and equitable way and will benchmark all salary offers in line with the pay of existing staff.

Interview Expenses

Candidates should note that unfortunately it is not our policy to reimburse expenses accrued when attending interviews at Save the Children UK unless you are requested to attend an interview in an alternative location to where the role is based.

Pre-employment Checks

Any Employment with Save the Children UK will be subject to the following checks prior to your start date: a satisfactory police record check to include a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and/or an International Criminal Record Check (If applicable), receipt of satisfactory references, proof of eligibility to work in the national location for this role.

If you have any questions, we have an FAQ section here.