Service Design Manager

Service Design Manager

Our client is a leading global technology and consulting organisation, delivering innovative solutions and supporting critical business operations for customers around the world. The company operates across a diverse range of sectors, providing high-value technology services, systems integration, digital transformation, and managed services to public and private sector clients globally.

Driven by a commitment to innovation, collaboration, trust, and forward-thinking technology, the organisation continues to grow its presence across the UK and is seeking additional resources to support a number of upcoming projects.

The Role

The Service Design Manager is responsible for defining and implementing the service design and service transition approach for a large-scale revenue collection and ticketing programme, ensuring that all changes are designed, assured, and transitioned into live service in a controlled and compliant manner.

The role leads all service design activities related to the implementation of changes across the end-to-end service landscape, ensuring that processes, tools, organisational structures, and governance frameworks are in place to support efficient delivery across the full service lifecycle.

The Service Design Manager ensures that all service design artefacts are complete, consistent, and compliant with internal standards and contractual requirements. Services must be designed to meet business objectives, operational needs, and service acceptance criteria at all times.

Key Duties Include

Define, maintain, and continuously improve the Service Design and Service Transition Plan, ensuring alignment with contractual requirements and governance frameworks.
Lead the development of end-to-end service designs covering service design, change management, testing, transition, and decommissioning processes.
Ensure all service designs support safe, controlled implementation of changes, minimising disruption to live services and customers.
Define and manage service acceptance criteria, system impact assessments, and traceability from business requirements through to delivery and testing.
Coordinate across suppliers and interfacing parties to ensure integrated service design and clear accountability across the ecosystem.
Ensure that all service designs meet business objectives, quality, compliance, security, and cost requirements.
Oversee production and governance of all service design artefacts, including high-level and low-level designs, support models, and documentation for assurance.
Ensure services are designed for resilience, scalability, supportability, and minimal operational impact, including avoidance of single points of failure.
Lead the service assurance process, ensuring all design, development, testing, and release stages are completed and approved prior to deployment.
Lead the Change Advisory Board (CAB) process, ensuring all service design aspects of proposed changes are adequately defined, assessed, and approved.
Drive operational readiness and service transition, including release management, deployment, training, early life support, and successful embedding into live operations.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related discipline (or equivalent experience).
Proven experience in service design and service transition within large-scale, complex IT or systems integration programmes.
Strong experience across the end-to-end service lifecycle, including design, testing, change management, and transition.
Demonstrable 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 multi-supplier environments and interface management, with the ability to coordinate across multiple parties.
Solid understanding of non-functional requirements, including security, resilience, performance, and scalability.
Experience in risk identification, management, and mitigation within service design and transition activities.
Strong knowledge of ITIL and ISO 20000 principles, particularly in service design, service transition, and continual improvement.
Strong governance and documentation skills, with experience supporting formal assurance, approvals, and audits.
Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively with customers, interfacing parties, suppliers, and technical teams.
Desirable certifications: ITIL 4 (Foundation minimum, advanced certification preferred) and familiarity with ISO 20000 or equivalent IT Service Management standards.
Desirable sector experience: Transport and mobility systems, particularly ticketing and revenue collection systems (EMV contactless, Oyster or equivalent fare systems), large public-sector or safety-critical environments, complex systems integration and third-party interface testing, and accreditation or compliance-driven programmes (PCI, security, regulatory environments)