Service Delivery Manager

Location: Birmingham or Northampton. Hybrid with 3 days in the office and travel to other office locations as required.

Reporting line: Head of IS : Technical Services.

Direct Reports: Service Desk Team Leader and Technical Support Lead.

The Service Delivery Manager is responsible for ensuring that IT services across the firm are delivered effectively, consistently and in line with business expectations. This role is accountable for overall service performance, standards and outcomes across a multi-site legal environment, ensuring high levels of service availability, responsiveness and user satisfaction. The role leads through clear expectations and oversight of service delivery, with Service Desk and Operations Support Team Leaders accountable for the day to day running of the service.

The Service Delivery Manager ensures service delivery is controlled, predictable and aligned to agreed standards, intervening where performance, capacity or quality begins to drift. The postholder acts as the bridge between IT operational teams, third party suppliers and the wider business, owning service performance, driving continual improvement and ensuring that technology services support the needs of lawyers and business services teams across all office locations. Issues, risks and capacity pressures must be made visible and addressed, not absorbed within teams. This is a key leadership role in maintaining a stable, client focused and commercially effective IT service for a modern law firm, ensuring clear ownership, consistent standards and accountability across the service.

The Information Systems (IS) team at Shoosmiths plays a pivotal role in the technological enablement of the firm, ensuring the seamless operation of all computer systems. With a focus on delivering robust and efficient technology services, the IS team is divided into two main departments: Applications and Technical Services. The Applications department is tasked with the development, maintenance, and support of the software applications vital to the firm's operations. Meanwhile, the Technical Services department is dedicated to the upkeep of the firm's computer architecture, providing operational support, diagnosing hardware and software issues, and configuring the back-office computing infrastructure. Together, these departments strive to deliver innovative solutions that cater to the evolving needs of the firm's user base, underpinning Shoosmiths' commitment to excellence in legal service provision.

Key Responsibilities

• Accountable for the end-to-end delivery of IT support services across the firm, ensuring alignment to business priorities and user needs.
• Accountable for service performance against agreed service levels and key performance indicators, taking early and decisive action where standards or outcomes drift.
• Ensure Service Desk and Operations Support Team Leaders maintain effective day to day control of service delivery, including queues, backlog, workload and escalation.
• Ensure consistent application of incident, request, problem and change disciplines, maintaining service stability and predictability.
• Provide senior operational leadership during major incidents, ensuring clear communication, structure and business confidence, and own post incident review and follow through.
• Maintain oversight of service health, including trends, recurring issues, operational risk and capacity, ensuring issues are identified and addressed early rather than absorbed.

Stakeholder & Business Relationship Management

• Build and maintain strong relationships with stakeholders across legal and business services teams, ensuring service aligns to business expectations.
• Act as the senior point of accountability for service performance and escalations.
• Ensure service delivery reflects the pace, expectations and client standards of a professional services environment.
• Communicate clearly on service performance, issues and improvement activity, ensuring transparency and trust.

Supplier & Third-Party Management

• Hold third party suppliers accountable for service performance, quality and delivery outcomes, not just contractual measures.
• Ensure supplier performance issues are visible, escalated and addressed in a timely manner.
• Lead service reviews and support contract renewal and improvement discussions.
• Ensure supplier activity aligns with internal service standards, processes and governance expectations.
• Own the identification, prioritisation and delivery of service improvements.
• Ensure improvements are driven by service data, trends and recurring issues, not anecdotal feedback.
• Drive improvements in automation, self-service, knowledge management and operational efficiency.
• Support service design and transition activity, ensuring new or changed services are supportable, controlled and well embedded.
• Ensure service management processes are defined, consistently applied and aligned to firm policies and standards.
• Ensure service data, reporting and insight are reliable and support effective decision making and audit requirements.
• Ensure risks, capacity constraints and service issues are visible, assessed and actively managed.
• Support audit, compliance and information security requirements within service operations.
• Ensure business continuity and disaster recovery considerations are reflected in how services are delivered.

Leadership & Team Development

• Set clear service and behavioural standards and ensure consistent application across all support functions.
• Hold Service Desk and Operations Support Team Leaders accountable for performance, control and adherence to standards.
• Ensure leaders are visible, engaged and in control of their areas of responsibility.
• Intervene early where performance, consistency or behaviour does not meet expectations.
• Create an environment where issues are raised early and ownership is clear.
• Develop leadership capability within the team, ensuring consistent, accountable and high performing delivery.

Person Specification

• Significant experience in IT service delivery, service management or operational support leadership, with clear accountability for service outcomes.
• Experience managing services in a multi-site environment with a diverse, high demand user base.
• Proven experience of leading Service Desk and support functions through defined standards, performance management and operational control, not just coordination.
• Experience of using ServiceNow to support service delivery, including driving data quality, reporting and process discipline.
• Experience holding third party suppliers accountable for service performance and delivery outcomes.
• Experience working with senior stakeholders, managing escalations and maintaining confidence during service disruption.
• Experience identifying, prioritising and delivering measurable service improvements based on trends, data and recurring issues.
• Experience within a law firm or professional services environment, or another fast paced, client focused organisation.
• Experience supporting legal systems such as iManage or practice management and time recording platforms.
• Experience of service transition, including introduction of new systems, office changes or major business changes.
• Experience operating in regulated or compliance led environments.

Essential Skills and Knowledge

• Strong understanding of IT service management principles, ideally aligned to ITIL.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret service data and identify root causes.
• Ability to balance operational delivery with strategic service improvement.
• Commercially aware, with sound judgement in managing priorities, suppliers and resources.
• Strong leadership skills, with the ability to motivate and develop teams across multiple locations.
• Well organised, resilient and able to operate effectively in a demanding professional environment.

Desirable Qualifications

• ITIL Foundation or higher.

Key Measures of Success

• Consistent achievement of agreed service levels and key performance indicators, with early intervention where performance begins to drift.
• Reduction in repeat incidents, avoidable rework and uncontrolled backlog.
• Stable, predictable service delivery with clear ownership and minimal avoidable escalation.
• Effective management of major incidents, with strong communication, clear ownership and timely follow through of actions.
• Supplier performance aligned to agreed outcomes, with issues identified and addressed early.
• Delivery of measurable service improvements that reduce operational noise or improve user experience.
• High levels of user confidence in IT services, reflecting reliability, clarity and responsiveness.
• Strong leadership engagement, with clear standards, visible control and consistent performance across support teams.

Behaviours and Attributes

• Be service focused, with a clear commitment to delivering reliable, high-quality outcomes for the business.
• Demonstrate ownership and accountability, taking responsibility for service performance and outcomes.
• Remain calm, structured and credible under pressure, maintaining control during service disruption.
• Build trust across technical and non-technical teams through clarity, consistency and follow through.
• Identify issues, risks and emerging pressures early, ensuring they are made visible and addressed.
• Set and reinforce clear standards, challenging behaviours that create inconsistency, risk or avoidable rework.
• Operate with a structured, pragmatic approach, ensuring service delivery is controlled, predictable and well understood.

Travel to other Shoosmiths offices will be necessary on occasions. It is essential that the Service Delivery Manager can work flexible or extended hours to complete some tasks outside of core business hours of 08:00 to 18:00. This role is a hybrid role but there is an expectation that the jobholder works from a Shoosmiths office for a minimum of 3 days a week. Due to the nature of this role, there is an expectation that additional hours may be required as and when necessary to meet business demands.

Equal Opportunities

Our approach to our people is underpinned by our approach to diversity, inclusion and well-being. Our ambition is to build a diverse and ambitious workforce that reflects all backgrounds and talents, and a workplace that is supportive and inclusive, recognises and nurtures talent, and has a strong sense of community between colleagues. This means that everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, whatever their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.