Service Design Manager

A leading global technology and engineering organisation is seeking an experienced Service Design Manager to join a major long-term transport technology programme. The role is responsible for defining and implementing the service design and service transition approach across a large-scale, business-critical technology environment, ensuring changes are designed, assured and transitioned into live service in a controlled and compliant manner.

The Service Design Manager will lead service design activities across the end-to-end service landscape, ensuring the appropriate processes, tools, organisation, documentation and governance are in place to support effective delivery throughout the full service lifecycle. This is a senior role working across technical teams, operational stakeholders, suppliers and customer representatives to ensure new and changed services meet business objectives, operational requirements and agreed service acceptance criteria.

Key Responsibilities

• Define, maintain and continuously improve the Service Design and Service Transition Plan, ensuring alignment with contractual and governance requirements.
• Lead the development of end-to-end service designs covering design, change management, testing, transition and decommissioning.
• Ensure new and changed services can be implemented safely and effectively while minimising disruption to live operational services and customers.
• Define and manage service acceptance criteria, system impact assessments and requirements traceability through design, delivery and testing.
• Coordinate across multiple suppliers, technical teams and interfacing parties to ensure integrated service design and clear accountability.
• Ensure service designs meet agreed business, quality, security, compliance, operational and cost requirements.
• Oversee the production and governance of key service design artefacts, including high-level designs, low-level designs, support models, impact assessments and assurance documentation.
• Ensure services are designed for resilience, scalability, performance and supportability, including the identification and mitigation of single points of failure.
• Lead the service assurance process, ensuring appropriate design, development, testing and release activities have been completed and approved prior to deployment.
• Lead and support Change Advisory Board (CAB) activities, ensuring the service implications of proposed changes are appropriately defined, assessed and approved.
• Drive operational readiness and service transition, including release management, deployment, training, early life support and successful handover into live operations.
• Identify and manage service design and transition risks, dependencies and potential operational impacts.
• Work closely with service management, engineering, architecture, operations, testing and project delivery teams throughout the service lifecycle.

Experience & Skills

• Proven experience in Service Design and Service Transition within large-scale, complex IT, technology or systems integration programmes.
• Strong experience across the end-to-end service lifecycle, including design, testing, change management, release and transition.
• Experience producing and managing service design artefacts, including option analysis, impact assessments, high-level designs, low-level designs and service documentation.
• Experience defining and managing service acceptance criteria, traceability matrices and assurance processes.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL service management principles, particularly Service Design, Service Transition, Change Management and Continual Improvement.
• Experience working within multi-supplier environments, coordinating dependencies and interfaces across multiple organisations.
• Good understanding of non-functional requirements, including security, resilience, availability, performance, scalability and supportability.
• Experience identifying, managing and mitigating risks associated with service design and transition.
• Strong governance and documentation experience, including supporting formal assurance, approvals, audits and change control.
• Experience working with Change Advisory Boards (CAB) and formal change management processes.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to work across senior management, customers, suppliers and technical teams.
• Ability to translate complex technical changes into clear operational and service requirements.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• ITIL 4 certification – Foundation as a minimum, with advanced qualifications preferred.
• Knowledge or experience of ISO 20000 or equivalent IT Service Management standards.