Head of Service, Performance and Cost Management

Head of Service, Performance and Cost Management

Reporting to: Director of Technology Operations & Optimisation

Location: UK & Germany

Role Objectives:

The Head of Service, Performance & Cost Management is responsible for the global governance, reporting, and optimisation layer of Technology Operations & Optimisation. This includes service performance, demand & capacity, FinOps, vendor governance, and enterprise license management. The role ensures transparency, operational control, financial predictability, and strategic optimisation across the entire Technology Run organisation. The role is specifically accountable for managing and optimising the performance of Cognizant as the primary managed services partner, ensuring service excellence, contractual compliance, financial efficiency, and seamless integration across all operational towers.

Key Results / Areas

Core Responsibilities

• Own and lead the global service performance framework (SLAs, OLAs, KPIs, SLOs) across all suppliers (e.g., Cognizant) delivered services.
• Govern the relationship with Cognizant as the primary supplier, ensuring contract adherence, service quality, performance transparency, and escalation handling.
• Drive quarterly business reviews, operational scorecards, and performance improvements with Cognizant delivery leads.
• Ensure integration of Cognizant-run services across Infrastructure, Platforms, Service Desk/IM, and regional operations.
• Lead continuous improvement, automation, and efficiency initiatives jointly with Cognizant.
• Govern contract renewals, rate cards, commercials, claims, and change requests with Cognizant.
• Lead global demand and capacity planning—platform, infra, cloud, telco—based on business requirements and Cognizant delivery capabilities.
• Manage cloud, telco, and internal cost structures, ensuring transparency, optimisation, and financial alignment with Cognizant delivery models.
• Integrate service performance, monitoring data, vendor performance, capacity, and cost into a unified operational governance model.
• Own the global license management governance and ensure full visibility of all technology licenses across infrastructure, platforms, and SaaS environments.
• Maintain accurate license inventories, entitlement tracking, utilisation insights, and renewal calendars.
• Ensure alignment between procurement, finance and service owners for accurate budgeting and renewals.
• Drive optimisation of license usage, including right-sizing, retirement, harvesting, and rationalisation opportunities.
• Implement governance for compliance with vendor license terms, ensuring audit readiness and minimising risk exposure.
• Define tools, processes, and dashboards for enterprise license reporting, optimisation, and forecasting.
• Integrate license data with CMDB, FinOps, vendor governance and service performance reporting.
• Manage end-to-end renewals with Procurement and Service Owners, ensuring cost efficiency and business continuity.

Leadership & People Management

• Lead and develop technical leaders across all platforms.
• Foster a high-performance engineering culture with accountability and continuous improvement.
• Enable skills development and succession planning across engineering functions.
• Promote cross-team collaboration with global and regional stakeholders.

Global Delivery & Collaboration

• Partner with Infrastructure Services for seamless hosting, networking, and security integration.
• Work with Integration, Performance & Cost Management to deliver observability, SLAs, KPIs, and capacity governance.
• Collaborate with regional Senior Service Managers to ensure platform performance and adoption across Americas, APAC, UK&I, and CEMEA.
• Align with PMO on demand intake, prioritisation, and cross-functional project execution.
• Partner with Infrastructure Services for integration and product enablement.
• Work with Service Desk & Incident Management to enhance stability and reduce MTTR.
• Provide transparency and governance to global regions (Americas, APAC, UK&I, CEMEA).
• Collaborate with Hays Digitize to ensure a smooth handover into a stable and performing platform service after release/go-live.

Key Deliverable

• Cognizant performance governance framework and monthly scorecards.
• Demand & capacity forecasting models aligned with Cognizant service delivery.
• Vendor contract governance, compliance reporting, and renewal planning.
• Global cost transparency dashboards: cloud, telco, internal costs.
• Operational risk assessments and optimisation action plans.
• Integrated operational performance reporting for executive stakeholders.
• Monthly Service Performance Pack (SSOT).
• Monthly Cost Pack (FinOps), including optimisation pipeline and forecasting accuracy.
• Quarterly Vendor Governance Scorecards (MBR/QBR).
• CMDB data-quality dashboards and mapping completeness reports.
• Enterprise License Inventory, Renewal Calendar, and Optimisation Report.
• Demand & Capacity Forecast (12–36 months).

KPIs & Success Measures

• SLA/OLA achievement across Cognizant-delivered services.
• Reduction in operational incidents, MTTR, and performance deviations.
• Vendor performance compliance and reduction of service credits or disputes.
• Cloud/telco cost efficiency and adherence to budget forecasts.
• Demand forecasting accuracy and proactive capacity management.
• Adoption of integrated performance governance across all regions and service lines.
• Strength and reliability of Cognizant partnership delivery outcomes.
• Forecast accuracy for capacity and cost.
• License utilisation improvements (optimisation %, harvested licenses, avoided costs).

Knowledge, qualifications, and experience

• 10+ years in operational performance management, vendor delivery governance, or financial/technology management.
• Hands-on experience managing large-scale managed service providers (ideally Cognizant, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, or similar).
• Strong commercial acumen including contract interpretation, negotiation, rate card optimisation, and claim/dispute handling.
• Excellent knowledge of ITIL, service performance frameworks, and operational KPIs.
• Experience running demand, capacity, and cost governance at scale.
• Strong analytical and executive communication skills, with the ability to challenge suppliers constructively.
• Proven ability to drive operational discipline, transparency, and financial accountability across global teams.
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to lead and inspire teams.
• Proven experience in managing technical teams
• Experience of delivering projects and programmes for technology
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Excellent internal and external stakeholder management skills

Skills and Competencies

• Builds customer loyalty: Demonstrates an understanding of the customer (internal/external), builds productive customer relationships with integrity, and takes responsibility for ensuring customer advocacy.
• Delivers against operational objectives: Translates strategic priorities into medium-term operational reality for own part of the business, respecting and aligning with the values and managing interdependencies with other parts of Hays.
• Engaging Communication: Engages and influences by using a wide range of communication methods and styles with the ability to present complex technical issues to varied populations. Facilitates understanding and encourages communication both within own team and more broadly.
• Builds collaborative relationships: Establishes effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders inside and outside their immediate working environment, valuing the contribution from others and leveraging networks across Hays.
• Facilitates transformational change: Facilitates the implementation of change and transformation within the workplace by guiding others and helping them adapt is a positive ambassador of change.
• Identifying and developing talent: Identifies and appropriately deploys key knowledge, skills and experience required across their organisation. Uses Hays’ people process to attract, develop, and engage and retain the appropriate talent.
• Demonstrates personal resilience: Highly efficient, has the organisation skills to manage a diverse range of tasks and see work through to completion, in a timely manner, ensuring deadlines are met. Able to cope well with pressure, deals constructively with setbacks.
• Demonstrates continuous learning: Demonstrates continuous interest in personal skills in development and learning, aiming to develop senior leadership capabilities and seeking continuous feedback to manage own impact and maintain self-awareness.

Situational Requirements

• Comfortable travelling– a dispersed geographic spread of countries.
• Able to work across multiple time zones.
• Fluency in written and oral English.

At Hays, we share a passion for creating a culture of opportunities for our people to flourish and succeed, whatever your background. We know that diversity of perspective and an inclusive approach, which encourages those experiences and views to be heard, is great for business and therefore your career.