UKRI
Head of Service Delivery
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
UKRI
Salary: £70,752 per annum.
Band: UKRI Band G.
Contract Type: Open ended.
Hours: Full-time/ Part Time (minimum 0.8 FTE) (flexible working available).
Location: Polaris House, Swindon, Wiltshire - Hybrid working available.
Closing Date: Sunday 2nd August 2026
About the role
The Head of Service Delivery is a senior leadership role with accountability for the performance, resilience and governance of live IT and business-critical services across corporate hub and most UKRI head office functions. Operating across a complex, federated, multi-supplier environment, the role provides strategic direction and operational leadership to ensure that services are stable, secure, responsive to business need and aligned to organisational priorities.
The postholder will lead the development of a high-performing service delivery function, bringing together service management, supplier governance, operational assurance and continual improvement. The role requires confident engagement with senior partners across Digital, Corporate Services and the wider organisation, with the ability to influence across organisational boundaries and deliver outcomes where direct line authority may not exist. The postholder will translate service performance, risk and technical issues into clear business insight and ensure that critical services support UKRI's operational effectiveness and strategic objectives.
Your responsibilities:
- Provide senior leadership for the end-to-end delivery of live IT and business-critical services, ensuring clear service ownership, strong performance management and effective operational governance.
- Establish and maintain a robust service delivery framework that supports resilience, service quality, risk management and continuous improvement across a diverse technology and supplier landscape.
- Lead the organisational response to major service issues, providing strategic oversight, clear decision making and effective communication during high-impact incidents and service recovery activity.
- Oversee change, release and service transition governance, ensuring that new and changed services are introduced in a controlled manner with appropriate operational readiness and minimal disruption to users.
- Drive strong supplier and partner management, holding internal and external providers to account for delivery, performance, compliance and service improvement outcomes.
- Provide governance and assurance for critical enterprise and research funding platforms, ensuring that services supporting corporate operations and the research community remain reliable, supportable and aligned to business priorities.
- Lead service reporting and performance insight, using data, trend analysis and service metrics to inform decision making, support assurance and drive measurable improvements in user experience and service effectiveness.
- Provide leadership on service risk, continuity and disaster recovery, ensuring that critical services are resilient and that recovery arrangements are tested, understood and fit for purpose.
- Contribute to the wider strategic leadership of Digital services, shaping service management standards, organisational capability and the maturity of service delivery practices across UKRI.
- Lead and develop teams and specialist functions within the service delivery area, fostering accountability, collaboration and a culture of high performance.
- Provide executive-level service assurance and governance reporting, ensuring senior leaders have clear visibility of operational risk, service health, compliance and strategic improvement activity.
- Provide executive leadership for operational resilience, disaster recovery and service continuity arrangements, ensuring critical services are recoverable, regularly tested and aligned to organisational risk appetite.
- Lead cross-supplier service integration and act as part of the intelligent customer function, ensuring end-to-end accountability across interconnected service providers and platforms.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Technology and Process experience and delivery
- Significant experience of leading IT service delivery in large, complex, federated organisations with multiple suppliers, diverse partners and a broad portfolio of live operational services.
- Solid understanding of service management disciplines, including incident, major incident, problem, change, release, transition and service level management, with the ability to embed proportionate governance and good practice.
- Demonstrable experience of delivering services within enterprise and SaaS environments, including business-critical platforms such as ERP, corporate applications, cloud-based services and user-facing digital platforms.
- Experience of establishing service performance frameworks, including the use of SLAs, OLAs, KPIs, dashboards and management information to drive accountability and improvement.
- Solid understanding of supplier governance, commercial oversight and contract performance management, with the ability to lead constructive challenge and ensure delivery against agreed outcomes.
- Experience of service continuity, operational resilience, disaster recovery planning and audit or assurance activity in a complex service environment.
- Understanding of service asset, software licensing and configuration management processes, with an appreciation of their role in service stability, compliance and cost control.
- Ability to translate technical and operational issues into practical business impact, supporting senior leaders to make informed decisions on service priorities, risk and investment.
- Evidence of leading service delivery transformation, including evolving operating models, governance, capabilities and ways of working, beyond the optimisation of existing services.
Personal Specification
The below criteria will be scored during Shortlisting (S), Interview (I) or both (S&I).
Essential
- Demonstrable passion for Service Management, with extensive experience applying Service Management and agile methodologies and models across a range of services within varying environments (S&I).
- Ability to provide visible and credible leadership during high-pressure operational situations, including major incidents, service disruption and executive-level escalations (S&I).
- Strong strategic thinking and judgement, with a clear understanding of how current work fits into broader Enterprise Services contexts and strategies so that deeper underlying problems and opportunities can be identified, addressed and managed appropriately (S&I).
- Strong analytical and financial management skills, with responsibility for service spending, ensuring actual costs remain within budget and actively managing any over or underspend (S&I).
- Demonstrable experience of leading and developing teams, building capability and creating an inclusive, accountable and high-performing culture. (S&I)
- Proven ability to influence across organisational boundaries, align stakeholders and drive service outcomes in complex environments where authority is shared or indirect (S&I).
- ITIL 5 Foundation qualification, with higher-level strategic ITIL certification or equivalent professional experience highly desirable (S).
- Knowledge of recognised service management and assurance standards, such as ISO/IEC 20000, and an understanding of their practical application (S).
- Relevant experience of enterprise service environments, including ERP or similarly critical business platforms, would be advantageous (S)
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Benefits
We recognise and value our employees as individuals and aim to provide a favourable pay and rewards package. We are committed to supporting employees' development and promote a culture of continuous learning!
A list of benefits below:
- An outstanding defined benefit pension scheme.
- 30 days' annual leave in addition to 10.5 public and privilege days (full time equivalent).
- Employee discounts and offers on retail and leisure activities.
- Employee assistance programme, providing confidential help and advice.
- Flexible working options.
Plus many more benefits and wellbeing initiatives that enable our employees to have a great work life balance!
For further information on our benefits please see:
Benefits of working at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
UKRI is an Equal Opportunity & Disability Confident Employer.
Please apply online, if you experience any issue applying, please contact Recruitment@ukri.org
Please note, if you will require sponsorship to work in the UK, as part of your sponsorship application, you and any dependants travelling with you, will be required to pay costs directly to The Home Office for the application before you start your role with us. UKRI is normally able to reimburse some, or all of these fees after you have become an employee and this can be discussed with the Hiring Manager. For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/how-much-it-costs or contact Recruitment@ukri.org.
UKRI - UK Research and Innovation
UKRI is an organisation that brings together the seven disciplinary research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. Together, we build an independent organisation with a strong voice and vision ensuring the UK maintains its world-leading position in research and innovation.
Supporting some of the world’s most exciting and challenging research projects, we develop and operate some of the most remarkable scientific facilities in the world. We are pushing the frontiers of human knowledge through fundamental research and delivering benefits for UK society and the economy through world-class research, skills and business-led innovation.
More information can be found at www.ukri.org.
Choosing to come to work at UKRI means that you will have access to a whole host of benefits from a defined benefit pension scheme, excellent holiday entitlement, access to employee shopping/travel discounts and salary sacrifice cycle to work scheme. For more details, visit benefits of working for UKRI.
How we support EDI in the workforce
At UKRI, we believe that everyone has a right to be treated with dignity and respect, and to be provided with equal opportunities to thrive and succeed in an environment that enables them to do so. We also value diversity of thought and experience within inclusive groups, organisations and the wider community. For further information, please visit ‘[How we support EDI in the
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills
Location