Southwark Council
ITSM Lead
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Why Southwark?
This is a rare opportunity to build the discipline that keeps a major London council running. Southwark is building a brand-new Digital and Resident Experience, and as ITSM Lead, you'll own the design, documentation and operation of the service management processes and platform that everything else depends on.
You'll join at a genuinely exciting time for the council, as we invest in our people and technology to better serve more than 300,000 residents across Southwark's diverse communities. You'll chair the Change Advisory Board, step in as major incident manager when it matters most and develop the ITSM Engineer who reports to you. If you're a service management professional who wants to build mature, consistent practice from the ground up and make a genuine difference to the services residents rely on, we'd love to hear from you.
What You'll Be Doing
The ITSM Lead makes sure the council's technology services run well for staff and for the residents they serve. You'll lead how we handle incidents, changes and problems, and bring teams across the council with you.
In This Role, You Will:
- Prioritise incidents, changes and improvements by their impact on residents and frontline services, and keep people informed when things go wrong.
- Lead service management across the council, bringing the service desk, resolver teams and service owners together around shared standards, and learning from incidents without looking for blame.
- Work with colleagues across council services to understand their experience of technology and act on what they tell you.
- Design, document and maintain the council's IT service management processes, including incident, major incident, problem, change enablement, request fulfilment, service level, knowledge and configuration management.
- Own the development, configuration and administration of the council's ITSM platform, directing the work of the ITSM Engineer and developing workflows, automation and self-service capability.
- Own the council's enterprise service monitoring and observability capability, defining monitoring standards, dashboards, alerting and service health reporting.
- Chair the Change Advisory Board, maintain the change enablement policy, and oversee the assessment of change impact and risk.
- Own the major incident and problem management processes, acting as major incident manager during major incidents and directing root cause analysis and preventive action.
- Define and produce service performance reporting for the IT Service Manager, Head of Operations and Digital and Resident Experience leadership and lead continual service improvement activity.
- Line manage and develop the ITSM Engineer, setting objectives and building capability in platform development and service management practice.
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What We're Looking For
We're Seeking a Credible Service Management Professional Who Brings:
- Comprehensive knowledge of IT service management principles and practice, including the ITIL framework (ITIL 4 Foundation or higher, or equivalent experience).
- Significant experience of IT service management in a large, complex organisation, ideally within local government or the public sector.
- Experience of designing, implementing and improving service management processes, and of developing and administering an ITSM platform.
- Experience of chairing or leading change governance, and of managing or coordinating major incidents and problem management activity.
- Experience of line managing or supervising technical staff, with clear and confident communication skills to lead governance meetings and coordinate incident response under pressure.
- A customer focus and a commitment to continuous improvement, with sound judgement in assessing change risk and impact.
To be considered for interview, you will be asked to submit your CV and a supporting statement (no more than two sides of A4) demonstrating how you meet the key criteria outlined in the attached Job Description and Person Specification.
Contact Information
- Internal Staff: For an informal discussion about the role, please contact Naseem Golamgouse via email at Naseem.Golamgouse@southwark.gov.uk
- External Candidates: For an informal discussion about the role, please contact Chris Hatcher via email at chrishatcher@allenlane.co.uk
Additional Information
- Working Hours: 36 hours per week (Monday to Friday)
- Location: 160 Tooley Street, London SE1 2QH
- Type of contract: Permanent
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Benefits And More Information
https://jobs.southwark.gov.uk/why-us/
Recruitment Timeline
- Advert close date: 11:59pm on Thursday 15th October 2026
- Shortlisting date/s: week commencing 19th October 2026
- Interview date/s: week commencing 2nd November 2026
The closing date is given as a guide. We reserve the right to close this vacancy once a sufficient number of applications has been received. We strongly advise you to complete your application as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
We are an organisation who is passionate about our people and understands that richness of diversity is a requirement to provide the best possible services to our communities. This is demonstrated through our council-wide ambitious commitment to tackle racial inequality in our communities and workforce through our Southwark Stands Together initiative. We particularly welcome applications from members of the black, Asian and ethnic minority communities to increase representation at senior management level in the Council.
Guaranteed Interview Scheme
As part of our commitment to inclusion, we offer guaranteed interviews for specific groups of people. To qualify, you'll need to meet the minimum requirements for the role, and identify with one of the below criteria:
- Members of the Armed Forces and veterans
- Are currently in care, or have previously been in care
- If you consider yourself to be disabled or if you have a long-term health condition
Please Note:
External candidates: If you are interested in applying for this position, please apply via our recruitment partner, Allen Lane, using the microsite link below.
Please do not use the ‘Apply Now’ button on this page, as external applications are being managed by Allen Lane and applications submitted through this button will not be accepted.
Internal candidates: If you are a current council employee, please continue to apply using the ‘Apply Now’ button on this page.
Attachments
Job Description and Person Specification - ITSM Lead
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