IT Service Manager (Centralised IT Services)

Key Roles & Responsibilities

1. IT Service Operations & Governance

• Own and manage daytoday IT service delivery across centrally managed Town Councils and designated EM Group entities.

• Lead, manage, coach, and performancemanage centrally deployed IT Officers and IT support staff.

• Define, maintain, and enforce standard operating procedures, service runbooks, and escalation paths across all supported entities.

• Ensure all incidents, service requests, problems, and changes are logged, tracked, and managed through the central ticketing system (Jira).

• Review incident trends, recurring issues, and service bottlenecks drive preventive and corrective actions.

• Prioritise crossentity issues and allocate resources to ensure service continuity and stability.

2. Vendor & Contract Operations Management

• Act as the single operational authority for IT vendor performance across Town Councils and EM Group operations.

• Monitor vendor SLAs, service quality, and response times across multiple business units.

• Identify systemic vendor or contractual issues and escalate to HQ IT leadership and Procurement.

• Participate in vendor service reviews and provide operational inputs into MA contracts, TCMSrelated arrangements, and EM Group IT contracts.

3. Microsoft 365 & Business Applications Oversight

• Ensure consistent delivery of firstline and secondline support for Microsoft 365 services across Town Councils and EM Group users.

• Oversee IT support for user administration, onboarding/offboarding, access management, and collaboration tools.

• Coordinate with HQ Applications and Digital teams for advanced system support, tender specifications, and solution evaluations.

• Maintain oversight of dashboards and reports produced by IT Officers, ensuring alignment with EM Group BI and data governance standards.

4. Cybersecurity Policy Enforcement (Operational)

• Ensure consistent enforcement of HQ IT and cybersecurity policies across Town Councils and EM Group operations (e.g. MFA, device compliance).

• Monitor compliance posture and escalate cyber risks, policy violations, or systemic gaps to HQ Cybersecurity.

• Support rollout of cybersecurity awareness initiatives in collaboration with the Cybersecurity Lead.

• This role does not own cybersecurity strategy, architecture, or risk acceptance.

5. Stakeholder & Business Engagement

• Serve as primary IT service escalation point for Town Council leadership and EM Group business stakeholders.

• Operate effectively within a managingagent and groupservices model, supporting multiple entities with distinct leadership and priorities.

• Manage stakeholder expectations while reinforcing HQ IT governance and service standards.

• Provide regular service performance reports, insights, and recommendations to HQ IT leadership.

6. Continuous Improvement & Service Maturity

• Drive standardisation of IT support processes, tools, and reporting across Town Councils and EM Group operations.

• Define and track key service KPIs (e.g. incident volumes, SLA compliance, user satisfaction, vendor performance).

• Identify opportunities for automation, skills uplift, service optimisation, and cost efficiency.

• Support phased onboarding of additional Town Councils or EM Group entities into the centralized IT service model.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or related discipline.

• 7-10 years of experience in IT service management or IT operations, with at least 3 years in a leadership role.

• Proven experience managing distributed, multisite, or sharedservices environments.

• Strong working knowledge of ITIL service management practices.

• Demonstrated experience in IT vendor and SLA management.

• Solid understanding of Microsoft 365 and corporate enduser support environments.

• Experience operating in multistakeholder or regulated environments is highly desirable.

We regret to inform that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.