Service Design Manager

Service Design Manager

Redhill, Surrey | Hybrid Working | 16-Month Fixed Term Contract

The Opportunity

A leading global technology and engineering organisation is seeking an experienced Service Design Manager to join a major long-term transport technology programme.

The role is responsible for defining and implementing the service design and service transition approach across a large-scale, business-critical technology environment, ensuring changes are designed, assured and transitioned into live service in a controlled and compliant manner.

The Service Design Manager will lead service design activities across the end-to-end service landscape, ensuring the appropriate processes, tools, organisation, documentation and governance are in place to support effective delivery throughout the full service lifecycle.

This is a senior role working across technical teams, operational stakeholders, suppliers and customer representatives to ensure new and changed services meet business objectives, operational requirements and agreed service acceptance criteria.

Key Responsibilities

Define, maintain and continuously improve the Service Design and Service Transition Plan, ensuring alignment with contractual and governance requirements.

Lead the development of end-to-end service designs covering design, change management, testing, transition and decommissioning.

Ensure new and changed services can be implemented safely and effectively while minimising disruption to live operational services and customers.

Define and manage service acceptance criteria, system impact assessments and requirements traceability through design, delivery and testing.

Coordinate across multiple suppliers, technical teams and interfacing parties to ensure integrated service design and clear accountability.

Ensure service designs meet agreed business, quality, security, compliance, operational and cost requirements.

Oversee the production and governance of key service design artefacts, including high-level designs, low-level designs, support models, impact assessments and assurance documentation.

Ensure services are designed for resilience, scalability, performance and supportability, including the identification and mitigation of single points of failure.

Lead the service assurance process, ensuring appropriate design, development, testing and release activities have been completed and approved prior to deployment.

Lead and support Change Advisory Board (CAB) activities, ensuring the service implications of proposed changes are appropriately defined, assessed and approved.

Drive operational readiness and service transition, including release management, deployment, training, early life support and successful handover into live operations.

Identify and manage service design and transition risks, dependencies and potential operational impacts.

Work closely with service management, engineering, architecture, operations, testing and project delivery teams throughout the service lifecycle.

Experience & Skills

The successful candidate will ideally have:

Proven experience in Service Design and Service Transition within large-scale, complex IT, technology or systems integration programmes.

Strong experience across the end-to-end service lifecycle, including design, testing, change management, release and transition.

Experience producing and managing service design artefacts, including option analysis, impact assessments, high-level designs, low-level designs and service documentation.

Experience defining and managing service acceptance criteria, traceability matrices and assurance processes.

Strong knowledge of ITIL service management principles, particularly Service Design, Service Transition, Change Management and Continual Improvement.

Experience working within multi-supplier environments, coordinating dependencies and interfaces across multiple organisations.

Good understanding of non-functional requirements, including security, resilience, availability, performance, scalability and supportability.

Experience identifying, managing and mitigating risks associated with service design and transition.

Strong governance and documentation experience, including supporting formal assurance, approvals, audits and change control.

Experience working with Change Advisory Boards (CAB) and formal change management processes.

Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to work across senior management, customers, suppliers and technical teams.

Ability to translate complex technical changes into clear operational and service requirements.

Qualifications

Ideally candidates will hold:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

ITIL 4 certification – Foundation as a minimum, with advanced qualifications preferred.

Knowledge or experience of ISO 20000 or equivalent IT Service Management standards