Senior IT Service Manager in Belfast

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Telford Tooling & Automation supports shared live tooling services used by product teams across HMRC, including GitLab, Jenkins, AWX, Nexus, HashiCorp Vault and bastion services. As Senior IT Service Manager, you will provide end-to-end operational management and service control for CMDG Tooling, a production Technical Service comprising several service offerings and complex internal, supplier and consumer dependencies.

You will ensure that service and support functions remain responsive to customer needs while maintaining service availability, reliability, resilience and performance. You will work with the Product Manager, architect, infrastructure engineers, suppliers, shared-platform teams and service consumers to manage incidents, problems, changes, service risks, performance and continual improvement. The service is also undergoing modernisation and transition. You will help protect live service while coordinating improvements, legacy-tooling transition and evidence-led decommissioning.

In this role, you will:

• Own service availability, reliability, resilience, performance and service reporting for CMDG Tooling and its service offerings.
• Ensure that service and support functions remain responsive to customer and service-consumer needs.
• Establish meaningful service measures and use service data, demand trends and customer feedback to identify risks and improvement priorities.
• Participate in major and lower-priority incidents and coordinate problem management, post-incident reviews, root-cause actions and follow-through.
• Maintain the consolidated service-risk, issue and dependency position, ensuring clear ownership and timely escalation.
• Govern the service-management aspects of technical change, including impact, communications, readiness, approvals and closure evidence.
• Maintain relevant Technical Service, Service Offering, support and service-knowledge records.
• Own and deliver a prioritised programme of measurable continual service improvement.
• Coordinate technical teams, suppliers, shared-platform teams and service consumers across complex operational dependencies.
• Support the safe introduction of service improvements and new functionality while protecting the integrity of existing live services.
• Coordinate consumer readiness and service evidence supporting modernisation, legacy transition and controlled decommissioning.
• Provide clear service-performance, risk and decision information to the Product Manager and senior stakeholders.

Person specification

You will be an experienced IT service-management professional who can operate independently across a complex live-service environment. You will use service information and professional judgement to maintain reliable services, understand customer needs, identify weaknesses and coordinate improvements. You will be comfortable working with engineers, suppliers, service consumers and senior stakeholders while maintaining clear boundaries between service management, product decisions and technical engineering. You will communicate clearly under operational pressure, provide evidence-based advice and ensure that risks, dependencies and service decisions remain visible and controlled.

Essential Criteria

• Substantial experience of managing complex live IT services, with responsibility for availability, reliability, resilience, performance and customer impact.
• Practical experience of core IT service-management practices, including incident management, problem management, change governance and service-risk management.
• Demonstrable experience of ensuring service and support functions remain responsive to customer needs, using service data, demand trends and feedback to improve support arrangements, communications and outcomes.
• Demonstrable experience of owning and delivering continual service improvements, using performance data, incident and problem trends, customer feedback, risks and technical-health evidence, with clear measures of improvement achieved.
• Experience of coordinating technical teams, suppliers and service consumers across complex dependencies, competing priorities, operational risks and service change.
• Experience of managing services through transition, modernisation or controlled decommissioning, while protecting live-service continuity and customer outcomes.
• Strong senior stakeholder-management and communication skills, including explaining technical service information, performance, risks and decisions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience of maintaining effective service governance and operational knowledge, including service records, ownership information, support arrangements, standards, reporting and assurance evidence.
• ITIL 4 Foundation certification, or a commitment to achieve it within an agreed period following appointment.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience managing shared tooling, platform or cloud-enabled services.
• Experience supporting the modernisation, transition or decommissioning of legacy technology.
• Experience using ServiceNow to manage service, incident, problem, change or catalogue information.
• Experience working in a multi-sourced environment involving internal teams, suppliers and shared-service providers.

This role requires the successful candidate to hold or be willing to obtain security check (SC) clearance.

HM Revenue and Customs contributes 13,629 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs. We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.