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
Gmail
Yahoomail