Service Transition Manager in Knutsford

Duration: contract to run until 30/11/2026

Rate: up to £538.38 p/d Umbrella inside IR35

As an experienced Service Transition Manager, you will be responsible for the service design and transition process that supports Product/Application Transition from Programme delivery into BAU Service Support/operations at an enterprise level.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Responsible for ensuring that the impact of every element of the life cycle of developmental change is considered, from the time a project is confirmed to its eventual deployment, involving co-ordination of the processes of operational level acceptance, transition planning, support requirements definition, configuration and change management, performance and risk evaluation, test management, release, deployment, early life support and release review.
• Facilitate the transition of all aspects of service change deriving from a programme of projects, from the stage where a project is owned fully by a project team, through transition, to service management, where business-as-usual support services are delivered by the support groups.
• Work closely with the projects teams, service owner and service delivery manager, the first line and second line support managers and SME teams, change management and the infrastructure teams.
• Responsible for gathering and articulating service requirements.
• Review and validate project deliverables, ensuring they meet the minimum quality standards for service operations and be robust when they fall short.
• Champion agile ways of working, growing and promoting IT service management best practices.
• Ensure alignment to Application and Security control standards whilst working closely with engineering ensuring maintenance of documentation including documenting & publishing fixes in central knowledge base.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of working in an IT service environment within a complex and diverse organisation.
• Deep understanding and experience in change delivery adopting different delivery methods (e.g. Waterfall, Agile).
• Technical background - able to understand various architecture solutions (Cloud, SaaS, on-premise).
• Experience developing support models for new services, establishing clear roles and responsibilities, and able to negotiate with stakeholders to gain acceptance of those models.
• Strong understanding of ITIL Incident, Change & Release Management and service continuity processes.
• Strong analytical skills with a data-driven approach and ability to grasp technical design.
• Effective stakeholder management and communication skills, comfortable presenting to large/senior audiences.
• Ability to train team members and stakeholders and pass on best practice procedures in IT service management.
• Ability to develop presentation and influencing skills, and be capable of making the case for and achieving effective service transition deliverables in project environments where delivery timescales may be inflexible.
• Experience of Service Acceptance Criteria.
• Structured thinker, able to develop and implement new processes and operate in areas of ambiguity.
• Ability to work across and manage a large number of stakeholders.
• Customer and relationship focused, process driven, metric focused, results oriented, organized, and self-directed.
• Bachelor's degree in information technology, Computer Science or a related discipline.
• Previous experience/track record of working in Financial Services Industry.
• ITIL Certification and ITIL Service Transition-certified.
• DevOps and ServiceNow experience.
• Self-starter, capable of working independently.
• Experienced in the use of the Microsoft Office toolset.
• Collaboration with outsourced and/or external development partners.
• Understanding of scalable architecture patterns and client/backend systems design.
• An appreciation of project and programme governance activities required in a large regulated financial services firm.