IT Service Manager at Optimal Growth Technologies

Job Summary

• The IT Service Manager is a key leadership role responsible for the end-to-end planning, delivery, performance, and continual improvement of IT services across the organisation.
• This position ensures that IT services are reliable, efficient, secure, and fully aligned with business objectives and user needs. 
• Working closely with technical teams, business stakeholders, and external vendors, the IT Service Manager drives operational excellence, manages service levels (SLAs/OLAs), oversees incident/problem/change processes, and fosters a customer-centric IT culture.
• The role has a strong emphasis on service strategy, operations, and continuous improvement.
• This is a strategic and hands-on position that bridges technology and business,ensuring high availability, minimal downtime, and optimal value from IT investments.

Key Responsibilities

Service Strategy & Delivery:

• Develop, implement, and maintain IT service strategies, policies, and processes.
• Design and improve services to meet evolving business requirements while aligning with organisational goals.

Incident, Problem & Change Management:

• Oversee the full lifecycle of incident, problem, request, and change management.
• Ensure timely resolution of issues, root cause analysis, and prevention of recurring problems to minimise business impact.

Service Level Management:

• Define, negotiate, monitor, and report on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs).
• Track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as uptime, Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and service availability.

Team Leadership & Development:

• Lead, mentor, and develop IT support teams (including service desk, operations, and technical specialists).
• Manage staffing, training, performance, and resource allocation to maintain a high-performing, customer-focused team.

Budget & Resource Management:

• Manage IT service budgets, vendor contracts, and procurement.
• Optimise costs while ensuring quality service delivery and compliance with financial controls. -

Vendor & Stakeholder Management:

• Build and maintain strong relationships with internal stakeholders, business units, and external service providers.
• Act as the primary point of escalation and ensure vendors meet contractual obligations.

Continuous Service Improvement :

• Identify opportunities for process optimisation, automation, and innovation.
• Implement improvements using ITIL practices to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and elevate service quality.

Compliance, Security & Risk:

• Ensure all IT services comply with relevant regulations (e.g., POPIA in South Africa), security standards, and organisational policies.
• Oversee data protection, risk management, and audit readiness.

Service Catalogue & Knowledge Management:

• Maintain an up-to-date service catalogue, knowledge base, and configuration management database (CMDB) to support efficient operations.

Reporting & Communication:

• Produce regular performance reports and dashboards for senior management.
• Communicate effectively with all levels of the organisation on IT service matters, changes, and improvements.

Monitoring and Alerting:

• Design, implement, and continuously improve proactive monitoring and alerting systems across the entire IT environment.

This includes:

• Deploying and managing enterprise monitoring tools for infrastructure, networks, servers, cloud services, applications, and end-user experience.
• Establishing real-time alerting mechanisms (email, SMS, Teams/Slack, automated tickets) with appropriate thresholds and escalation paths.
• Ensuring 24/7 monitoring coverage and rapid detection of performance degradation, outages, or anomalies.
• Integrating monitoring systems with the ITSM platform for automatic incident creation.
• Conducting regular reviews of monitoring effectiveness, reducing false positives, and driving proactive issue resolution.
• Supporting capacity planning, trend analysis, and performance reporting through monitoring data.

Security and Vulnerability Management:

• Own and drive the organisation's IT security posture within the service management framework.

This includes:

• Leading vulnerability scanning, assessment, prioritisation, and remediation activities.
• Overseeing patch management processes for servers, endpoints, applications, and network devices.
• Ensuring timely mitigation of identified vulnerabilities and security risks.
• Coordinating with cybersecurity teams on threat intelligence, penetration testing, and security incident response.
• Embedding security controls into service design, transition, and operation(Security by Design)
• Monitoring and reporting on security compliance, vulnerability trends, and risk exposure to senior leadership.

Qualifications & Experience

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Information Systems, or a related field.

Experience:

• Minimum 5–7 years of progressive experience in IT operations or service management, with at least 3 years in a leadership or managerial capacity.
• Experience in a multi-vendor or enterprise environment is highly advantageous.
• Local Context (South Africa): Familiarity with South African regulatory requirements e.g., POPIA, cybersecurity frameworks) and experience working in dynamic industries such as finance, telecoms sector is a plus.

Essential Skills & Competencies

Leadership & People Management: Proven ability to lead, motivate, and develop high

performing teams.

Technical Knowledge:

• Solid understanding of IT infrastructure, networks, cloud services, cybersecurity, and common ITSM tools (e.g., Jira, Remedy).

Project Management:

• Familiarity with project management principles (e.g., Agile, Prince2).

Preferred Certifications

• ITIL 4 Foundation (or higher – e.g., ITIL 4 Managing Professional or Strategic Leader)
• Project Management Professional (PMP), CAPM, or PRINCE2.
• Certifications in security or risk (e.g., CISSP, CISM, CRISC).
• AWS