Senior Service Delivery Manager

Job Description:

Senior Service Delivery Manager - £650 per day - Inside IR35 - Hybrid working from Manchester or Derby - 6 Months initial contract.

Our client, a globally establish engineering organisation, is looking for an experienced Senior Service Delivery Manager to lead the strategic and operational delivery of IT services across their organisation. This is a senior leadership role with accountability for service performance, resilience, governance, and continuous improvement.

You'll ensure IT services consistently meet business needs, enable digital transformation, and deliver an excellent user experience. Working closely with senior stakeholders and external partners, you'll shape service strategy, drive operational excellence, and embed a high-performance, customer-centric service culture.

Key responsibilities -

• Own and lead the IT service delivery strategy, ensuring alignment with business and digital transformation goals
• Establish and maintain strong service governance frameworks, including SLAs, XLAs, OLAs and KPIs
• Lead, coach and inspire service management teams, creating a high-performance and customer-focused culture
• Act as the senior escalation point for major incidents, providing leadership during high-impact events
• Define and deliver the service improvement roadmap, driving continuous optimisation and innovation
• Partner with senior business stakeholders to ensure services evolve in line with organisational priorities
• Lead vendor and supplier management, including performance reviews and risk management
• Drive operational excellence across ITIL-aligned processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Capacity)
• Ensure compliance with regulatory, security and audit requirements, including ISO / CE+ controls
• Champion user experience, service integration and digital service maturity

What success looks like -

In the short term, you will:

• Establish regular and effective supplier performance reviews
• Embed user experience at the heart of service delivery
• Develop and execute continuous improvement plans
• Ensure core IT services are delivered efficiently and reliably
• Achieve compliance with ISO and CE+ control requirements

In the medium term, you will:

• Align IT service performance directly to business outcomes
• Reduce major incidents and improve first-time resolution rates
• Improve service experience metrics (e.g. CSAT, NPS)
• Strengthen supplier performance and reduce operational risk
• Deliver measurable progress against service maturity and innovation roadmaps

What you'll bring -

• Proven experience leading large-scale IT service delivery and operations
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence at senior level
• Deep expertise in incident, change and supplier management, including leadership during major incidents
• Experience managing complex service portfolios, budgets, and sourcing models
• A strong governance mindset with a focus on risk, resilience and compliance
• A passion for continuous improvement and service excellence

Essential qualifications & experience -

• Senior service management certifications (e.g. ITIL® Expert, ISO/IEC 20000, COBIT®, SIAM or equivalent)
• 10+ years' experience in IT service management or operations leadership
• Demonstrated experience managing large service delivery teams and external vendors

Desirable experience -

• Cloud service management experience (Azure and/or AWS)
• Experience working in Agile and DevOps environments
• Implementation of XLA and XPI service measurement approaches