Automation Operations Manager

Job Title: Automation Operations Manager

Location: Hybrid working between our head office in Durrington (Worthing) approx 2 days pw, and home.

Contract Type: Permanent

Hours: 37 hours per week, Monday - Friday

Salary: Up to £72,000, commensurate to skills and experience.

About the role

Water underpins everyday life, yet it remains an industry that is still evolving in how it measures and realises value from transformation, data and automation. At Southern Water, that is changing.

We are building a new Process & Intelligent Automation capability at the heart of the organisation. This is not about incremental improvements, it is about ensuring every investment in automation, AI and process optimisation delivers clear, measurable and sustained value for the business, our customers and regulators.

As Automation Operations Manager, you will play a critical role in ensuring the reliability, resilience and performance of Southern Water's growing automation and AI estate.

This is a senior operational leadership role within a new capability, giving you the opportunity to shape how automation services are supported, governed and continuously improved across the organisation. You will own the operational strategy for automation platforms and AI-enabled services, ensuring they remain secure, stable and aligned with business priorities while delivering measurable value at scale.

Reporting to the Head of Process & Intelligent Automation, you will lead an external managed service team responsible for supporting automation platforms and solutions in production. Working closely with Architecture, Engineering, Integration and Platform teams, you will ensure operational considerations are embedded throughout the solution lifecycle, from design through to support, optimisation and retirement.

This role goes beyond traditional IT operations. It is about building and leading a modern automation operations capability that enables automation and AI technologies to operate safely, reliably and at enterprise scale.

What you’ll be responsible for:

• Leading the operational management of Southern Water's automation and AI estate, ensuring services remain reliable, resilient and secure.
• Managing and overseeing an external managed service team responsible for supporting live automation solutions and platforms.
• Acting as the senior escalation point for major incidents, coordinating cross-functional teams to restore service and minimise business impact.
• Driving service excellence through effective incident, problem, change and release management processes.
• Overseeing the operation of Power Platform solutions, RPA platforms, Logic Apps, Alteryx workflows, Co-Pilot agents, Foundry processes and related automation technologies.
• Monitoring platform health, performance, capacity and service trends to proactively identify risks and opportunities for improvement.
• Leading root cause investigations and implementing long-term corrective actions to improve operational stability.
• Ensuring operational activities meet agreed SLAs, regulatory requirements and internal governance standards.
• Working with Architecture and Platform Engineering teams to maintain alignment with security, data governance and enterprise technology standards.
• Managing operational documentation, runbooks, support models and audit evidence.
• Coordinating operational readiness, deployment support, patching cycles and release activities across automation platforms.
• Building operational reporting and dashboards that provide visibility of service health, risk and performance.
• Identifying opportunities to improve automation support processes, tooling and operating models.
• Supporting the continued growth and scaling of automation and AI capabilities across Southern Water.

What you’ll bring to the role:

Essential

• Significant experience managing large-scale production application environments, particularly SaaS-based platforms.
• Minimum 10 years' experience in IT operations, application support, automation operations or related operational leadership roles.
• Minimum 5 years' experience managing outsourced or managed service support organisations against demanding business SLAs.
• Proven experience owning operational services, incident management and service performance within complex technology environments.
• Strong understanding of IT service management principles, including incident, problem, change and release management.
• Experience supporting automation technologies such as Power Platform, RPA, Logic Apps, workflow orchestration or similar platforms.
• Strong knowledge of cloud-based services and operational practices across Azure or equivalent environments.
• Experience interpreting monitoring dashboards, telemetry, logs and performance metrics to drive service improvements.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to engage effectively across technical, operational and executive audiences.
• Experience leading teams and suppliers to deliver high-quality support services and operational outcomes.
• Strong understanding of security, access controls, governance and operational compliance requirements.

Desirable

• ITIL v4 certification.
• Microsoft certifications such as PL-400, PL-600, AZ-104 or related technologies.
• Blue Prism, ServiceNow RPA or automation operations certifications.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Splunk or Dynatrace.
• Understanding of AI-enabled services and operational monitoring of AI solutions.
• Knowledge of enterprise integration platforms, APIs and cloud-native technologies.
• Experience working within a regulated or critical national infrastructure environment.
• Familiarity with Southern Water's technology landscape, including ServiceNow, Workday, Maximo, GIS platforms, SAP BO and WaterWorxx.