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
