Head of IT Service Management in Basingstoke

We've got a fantastic opportunity to join Sovereign Network Group (SNG) as Head of IT Service Management, based from our office in Basingstoke. You'll combine home and office working to ensure a positive work / life balance. It's an exciting time to join SNG as we continue to develop our IT service provision. We'll be implementing a new Enterprise Service Platform in the Summer which will be used for managing IT Service tickets and ITIL-aligned processes. You'll be driving the adoption of the platform across the IT service teams and helping to identify and prioritise opportunities for automation and self-service as we move forward to improve the IT support experience for all SNG colleagues.

The Role

As Head of IT Service Management, you'll be responsible for driving delivery of SNG's IT service strategy and leading the IT service management function within CIO, enabling organisational resilience from a technology perspective and making SNG a great place to work for its colleagues.

Main responsibilities include:

• As a key member of the CIO Leadership team, supporting the realisation of the CIO vision and strategic direction including contributing to the implementation of the CIO strategy in support of delivering SNG's corporate plan objectives.
• Leading the IT Service Management team with a focus on articulating a clear vision, providing direction, encouraging high performance, and supporting continuous improvement.
• Leading and overseeing the maturity of ITIL practices, including incident management, service requests, configuration and capacity management, asset management, change and problem management, IT service knowledge management and service acceptance.
• Accountability for end-to-end IT service performance and colleague experience, driving operational simplification, continuous service improvement and cost effectiveness initiatives.
• Driving development of CIO's IT service portfolio and catalogue, ensuring it is maintained to reflect the ongoing evolution of the services provided.
• Acting as a major incident manager (when required), in accordance with the major incident management process, and supporting security and disaster recovery testing, as well as auditing and risk assessments, as required.

What we need from you

You should have demonstrable experience in a similar senior role within IT Service Management, ideally from within a similar sized organisation. Any experience working in the housing sector is desirable but not essential. You'll also need:

• A professional Qualification in IT Service Management, such as ITIL v3 Expert and/or ITIL v4 Managing Professional/Strategic Leader, IT Service Desk Management (SDI).
• Demonstrable experience of IT Service Strategy design and implementation.
• Strong experience leading IT Service Desks with multi-tiered teams.
• Experience of leading ITIL adoption and maturity across IT Service Management and wider IT teams.
• Experience of driving a customer-service focused team culture.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to build effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Knowledge and experience of 3rd party IT Supplier Management is desirable.