It Service Manager

Description:

The IT Service Manager is a senior, experienced practitioner responsible for the end-to-end ownership of complex, business‑critical IT services within a regulated enterprise environment. The role requires proven experience in leading service management across major incidents, change, problem, and supplier management, operating with a high degree of autonomy, authority, and influence across senior business and IT stakeholders.

This will be a hybrid role, This will be a hybrid role, we are happy to consider applicants from South East, London and the Midlands.

About You

Strategic Activities

You will be proactively anticipates evolving business requirements and shapes the Service Management capability to meet future strategic demand.
Act as a trusted senior partner to Business Leaders and Business Partners, translating business strategy into sustainable IT service outcomes.

Incident Management

Acts as the senior IT Service Management authority during high‑severity and business‑critical incidents, including major incidents with significant customer, regulatory, financial, or reputational impact.
Directs and holds to account AzT and other IT Suppliers during an incident. Ensuring AzT IM are setting the correct pace, calling in the right resources at the right point and escalating to both senior AzT Branch management & Central avoiding any stalls in incident resolution.
Owns the articulation of business impact to senior stakeholders and that communications to and from affected business stakeholders are effective.

Problem Management 

The Service Managers are individually assigned ownership of each P1/P2 Problem. The SM owner is responsible for attending the RCA Call (likely with support from other SM’s depending on impacted areas), ensuring:-
Ensures Root Cause Analysis moves beyond technical symptoms to systemic, organisational, and supplier‑related causes, with corrective actions that are sustainable at enterprise scale.
AzT are driving RCAs effectively
Calling out any shortfalls in the incident handling putting swift resolution at risk (e.g. delays in getting the right resource onto the bridge call) - importantly agreeing actions to address
Ensuring true Root Cause has been found and Corrective Actions are robust enough to eradicate Root Cause from the Production Environment
Ensure business stakeholders receive updates on full root cause, lessons learned and steps to prevent future occurrences. 

Change Management 

Responsible for ensuring due diligence on all Changes:-
Exercises experienced professional judgement to challenge risk classifications, approvals, and change sequencing where necessary to protect business outcomes.
Forward Schedule of Change - Working closely with IT Suppliers and Change Practices, ensure Change activity is communicated, understood and approved by the business. 
Key focus on working to minimise IT Downtime through effective management of the Forward Schedule of Change
Change detail meets criteria called out on Change form
Risk Classification has been set correctly
Downstream impact (or potential impact) has been understood and the correct post testers are identified and approvers (e.g. downstream Data impact, Data Team are listed as approvers)
Assessment has been done on clashing Change activity. Both from impact clash as well as risk of attempting too much activity during a specific Change window
Ensuring where relevant, Service Acceptance and Readiness process have been followed
Ensure failed changes are reported and investigated 

Management Activities

Ensure compliance with Group policies and regulatory requirements by collaborating closely with IT Delivery Partners.
Coordinate internal business expectations and requirements under the guidance of the Head of IT Business Service, reporting on service expectations, leading improvement initiatives, and providing progress updates to the business.
Oversee service reviews and IT performance reporting, including Service Level Agreements.
Resolve escalated service delivery issues promptly.
Initiate and track continuous service improvement activities to completion.
Oversee the daily operation of customer-facing IT services by defining, implementing, and monitoring incident and service request management processes across the IT function.
Manage risks related to IT Service Management and Delivery in partnership with ITSC&M.
Ensure cost-effectiveness and value for money in service delivery.
Provide actionable service insights to enhance customer experience.
Promote, secure sponsorship for, and implement new technology processes or capabilities that benefit the UK business.
Collaborate with outsourced application development teams to maintain and improve IT service availability as platform complexity increases.
Champion the UK business digital strategy by implementing the necessary IT service skills and processes to support its vision.
Act as the end-to-end service owner for services within your portfolio.

Common Activities

Collaborate with internal and third party teams to deliver to requirement 
Lead on business engagement in respective areas of the business and regular travel to various offices to meet with business teams and stakeholders at least 2-3 days per week.
Drive continual service improvement activity working with wider Service Management Team
Partner with colleagues across the Allianz Operations Function (Change, IT, Facilities and Data) in the effective delivery of all BAU IT services and project and programme related activities.

Essential Skills

Extensive, hands‑on experience of applying ITIL disciplines within large, complex, and regulated environments, including the ability to coach, challenge, and influence others in their effective use.
Experience establishing or maturing service management practices” 
Experience operating in SIAM / multi‑supplier models
Management of IT outsourced third-party service provision
Extensive experience and understanding of system development methodologies
Extensive experience and understanding of system testing approaches, methods and tools
Extensive experience of configuration management processes and disciplines
Extensive understanding and experience of IT service introduction methods, disciplines, tools and reporting 
We support the government scheme “Access to Work” please feel free to ask us about the access to work scheme.

Desirable Skills

Responsible Artificial Intelligence usage. 
Proven experience working in Agile, DevOps, or product‑centric delivery models 
Strong understanding of how ITIL practices integrate pragmatically with Agile delivery 
Experience supporting frequent releases, continuous delivery, and rapid change 
Confidence influencing product owners, engineers, and delivery leads on service risk and operability 
Ability to operate autonomously, handling major incidents, complex stakeholders, and multi‑supplier environments 
A mindset focused on continuous improvement, customer outcomes, and built‑in resilience