Senior Service Manager
Job ID: 16143Company: Sopra SteriaLocation: Farnborough, GBRJob Type: PermanentJob Level: Level 4Category: Network and InfrastructureIndustry: Professional ServicesPosted Date: 2026-08-20Are you an experienced Service Management leader who has
successfully led large, complex services and teams within demanding, secure
environments?
Sopra Steria's Aerospace, Defence and Security business is
looking for a Senior Service Manager to take ownership of a large and
growing service, providing leadership across a broad Service Management capability,
and helping shape how the service develops over the coming years.
The service is still evolving and going through significant transformation,
giving you the opportunity to put your own stamp on it, define its future
direction and build a service that delivers real value to our customer.
You will also play a senior role within our wider Service
Management capability, helping develop our existing teams and contributing to
the future direction of Service Management across the UK business.
This role requires the successful candidate to hold active MoD DV and be within a commutable distance of Farnborough. The role offers a hybrid working arrangement, with an expectation to be on site in Farnborough three days per week.
What you'll be doing:
Owning
the overall strategy, performance, and future direction of a large,
complex service, ensuring it continues to meet customer, contractual,
commercial and operational requirements.
Leading
and developing a diverse Service Management organisation including Service Managers, Service Desk leadership, practice
specialists and technical teams. Driving
the transformation and continual improvement of the service, identifying
opportunities to improve performance, resilience, customer experience,
automation and operational efficiency.
Developing
and communicating a clear service strategy and roadmap, ensuring teams,
customers and senior stakeholders understand the direction of travel and
their role within it. Providing
leadership across new and transitioning services, working closely with
technical, architecture, cyber, delivery and commercial teams to ensure
services are designed and transitioned successfully into operation.
Building
strong relationships across the customer and Sopra Steria, managing
challenging situations and competing priorities while contributing to the
growth and development of our wider Service Management capability.
What you'll bring: Significant
Service Management experience, with experience owning and leading
large-scale, complex IT services within demanding customer environments.
Strong
people leadership experience, with a track record of managing large and
diverse teams, developing leaders and successfully managing performance, and challenging situations.
Understanding of end-to-end service delivery, including Service Desk,
technical operations, infrastructure/platform teams, ITIL practices,
service transition and continual service improvement.
Strong
strategic thinking and communication skills, with the ability to define a
service vision and communicate strategy clearly with operational teams,
customers, peers and senior leadership. A
recognised Service Management qualification, ideally ITIL 4 Managing
Professional or equivalent senior ITIL v3 experience, together with a
strong understanding of modern Service Management practices.
Experience
working within secure or highly regulated environments, with a good
understanding of cyber security and the ability to hold or obtain the
required MoD DV security clearance.
If you are interested in this role but not sure if your
skills and experience are exactly what we're looking for, please do apply, we'd
love to hear from you!
Employment Type: Permanent Location: Farnborough Security Clearance Level: MoD DV essential Internal Recruiter: Josh Salary: Competitive, based on experience Benefits: Bonus, 6,600 car allowance, which can also be
taken as cash. Benefits include 25 days' holiday, with the option to purchase
up to an additional 10 days per year, AXA
medical insurance, 6% pension contribution and life assurance at 4x salaryIf you're interested and need to work flexibly, we encourage
you to apply and talk to us about what might be possible.
Loved reading about this job and want to know more about
us? Sopra Steria's Aerospace, Defence and Security business
designs, develops and deploys digital solutions to Central Government clients.
The work we do makes a real difference to the client's goal of National
Security, and we operate in a unique and privileged environment. We are given
time for professional development activities, and we coach and mentor our
colleagues, sharing knowledge and learning from each other. We foster a culture
in which employees feel valued and supported and have pride in their work for
the customer, delivering outstanding rates of customer satisfaction in the UK's
most complex safety- and security-critical markets.
Skillsservice managementitilmod dv security clearanceservice strategy developmentservice transitionperformance managementteam leadershipcybersecurityinfrastructure managementservice desk operationsoperational efficiency improvementstakeholder managementstrategic planningchange managementautomationcustomer experience improvementteam developmentsecurity clearanceit operationsservice delivery