Lead Service Manager (ITIL) £65,000 – £90,000 + Car Allowance + Bonus (up to 20%) + PensionHybrid Working (2 days office / 3 days home) – Coventry or Manchester**

Our client, a well-established UK organisation operating in a complex, regulated environment, is investing significantly in its IT Service Management function following a major restructure. As part of this, they're looking for a Lead Service Manager to take end-to-end ownership of IT service quality for a key business directive – covering internal technology teams and a portfolio of third-party vendors and partners.

This is a genuinely business-facing role. You'll be the trusted point of contact between business stakeholders and IT, holding vendors to account on performance, driving service improvement (reactive and proactive), and ensuring commercial commitments – contracts, renewals, SLAs – land on time and deliver value.

What you'll be doing

– Owning service quality end-to-end across internal teams and outsourced/third-party vendors, including services where you're managing through SLAs and contractual levers rather than direct oversight – Holding vendors accountable for performance, running corrective action plans where needed, and driving continuous improvement – Taking commercial ownership of vendor contracts and renewals, ensuring nothing slips – Acting as the primary business-facing point of contact for a defined directive, building trusted relationships with stakeholders at all levels – Playing an active role in incident and problem management, keeping stakeholders informed and addressing recurring issues at source – Working closely with change delivery teams to ensure new or modified services transition smoothly into live support – Representing service priorities and risk considerations within delivery roadmaps

What we're looking for

– A background in service management, ideally from an MSP, service transition, or incident/problem management environment – Solid grounding in ITIL (Foundation level minimum) – Strong commercial acumen – comfortable negotiating with vendors and managing contracts – Outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills – able to listen as well as drive outcomes – Comfortable operating in a complex, regulated, fast-paced environment – Financial services or other regulated-sector experience is a plus but not essential – we're equally interested in candidates from MSP, telecoms, retail or other complex service environments – Working knowledge of Microsoft Office; Jira experience useful but not essential

What's on offer

– £65,000 – £90,000 base salary, depending on experience – Car allowance – Discretionary annual bonus of up to 20% – Matched pension contribution – Life assurance, private medical insurance, health screening – 28 days holiday plus bank holidays, with a buy/sell scheme – Hybrid working – 2 days in office (Coventry or Manchester), 3 days from home

This is a fast-moving process with a target start date ahead of a major business milestone in early September, so early applications are encouraged.

Interested? Apply now or get in touch for a confidential conversation about the role, closing date for application is Wed

Guidant, Carbon60, Lorien & SRG – The Impellam Group Portfolio are acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.