Sopra Steria
Head of Service
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Are you an experienced service leader looking for an opportunity to shape the future direction of service delivery across a complex, high-profile environment?
This work has a critical national purpose, helping to safeguard the UK by ensuring essential services remain resilient, reliable and protected. You will play a key role in a growing service function, providing strategic direction across a complex account made up of multiple services, stakeholders and commercial frameworks.
Role Overview
As Head of Service, you will be responsible for leading the overall service strategy, performance and growth of the account. You will ensure services are set up to deliver effectively today, while also shaping how they develop for the future.
You will provide structure and strategic direction across the service environment, taking a broader view across service strategy, performance, governance, commercial position, service improvement and future growth, while working closely with the Service Operations Manager, who will focus on BAU delivery.
This is a key leadership role in a growing area of the business. You will help shape the next generation of service delivery across the account, influence the service culture, support future contract growth and bring a fresh approach to how services are managed, improved and delivered.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the overall service strategy across multiple services, customers and commercial frameworks, ensuring delivery is aligned to customer, contractual and business objectives.
- Oversee the Service Operations Manager and wider service teams, ensuring BAU performance, escalations, risks and service issues are being managed effectively.
- Work closely with the customer, account leadership and senior stakeholders to understand priorities, manage expectations and shape future service direction.
- Attend and contribute to account-level governance forums, including service, finance, strategy and growth boards, providing clear updates and supporting decision making.
- Support service design, transition and acceptance into live service, ensuring new or changing services are fit for purpose and have the right operating model, governance and controls in place.
- Drive continual service improvement, identifying inefficiencies, improving ways of working and supporting opportunities for account growth, service development and future contract success.
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Required Skills and Experience
- Strong background in service management, within a complex IT services, managed services or account-led environment.
- Experience leading services across multiple areas, customers or service lines, with an understanding of service strategy, lifecycle management, transition and operational performance.
- Understanding of ITIL service management principles, ideally ITIL 4, with awareness of Agile, DevOps or hybrid delivery approaches being beneficial.
- Commercial and financial awareness, including experience working with contracts, budgets, cost control, service performance, risk and opportunities for growth.
- Proven stakeholder management experience, with the ability to engage customers, senior leaders, commercial teams, finance, engineering, architecture and security.
- Strong leadership experience, with the ability to influence teams, provide clear direction, manage escalations and shape a positive service culture across a complex account.
Application Information
If you are interested in this role but not sure if your skills and experience are exactly what we’re looking for, please do apply, we’d love to hear from you!
Employment Details
- Type: Permanent
- Location: Gloucestershire - on site full time
- Security Clearance Level: eDV
- Internal Recruiter: Josh
- Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience
- Benefits: Bonus, 25 days annual leave with the choice to buy extra 10 days, 3% flex fund benefit, £5,400 car allowance, AXA Medical Insurance, life assurance, and 6% pension
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About Sopra Steria
Sopra Steria’s Aerospace, Defence and Security business designs, develops and deploys digital solutions to Central Government clients. The work we do makes a real difference to the client’s goal of National Security, and we operate in a unique and privileged environment. We are given time for professional development activities, and we coach and mentor our colleagues, sharing knowledge and learning from each other. We foster a culture in which employees feel valued and supported and have pride in their work for the customer, delivering outstanding rates of customer satisfaction in the UK’s most complex safety- and security-critical markets.
We embrace difference as a source of creativity, innovation and competitive advantage and are striving to become a more diverse organisation. We welcome applications from people with a diverse variety of backgrounds and identities. We are committed to equality of opportunity for all and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or marital status. We have partnered with Vercida, the UK's largest diversity and inclusion focused careers site, where all our vacancies are available in an accessible format.
If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, to enable you to perform to the best of your ability, please let us know when completing your application. We participate in the Disability Confident scheme and are committed to offering an interview to any candidate with a disability, who meets the minimum criteria for the role. If you believe this could apply to you, please let us know when completing your application.
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