Head of IT Service Management - HMRC - G7

Locations: Edinburgh, Leeds
(Newcastle available to existing HMRC staff only)

Why this role?

This is a senior leadership role at the heart of HMRC’s live service operations.

As Head of IT Service Management, you’ll be accountable for the stability, resilience and recovery of business‑critical services that handle payments, reconciliation, debt management and core corporate systems.

This role demands sound judgement, strong leadership and the confidence to make time‑critical decisions in high‑impact environments.

About the team

You’ll lead service management within Finance & Corporate Services, providing the live service wrapper for systems including:

• Debt Management
• Banking and payment services
• Corporate platforms such as HR and internal services

These services carry significant financial, operational and reputational risk, and are managed by an experienced team of Live Service Managers and product professionals.

What you’ll be doing

As Head of IT Service Management, you will:

• Be accountable for the resilience of live services, ensuring they can withstand, respond to and recover from incidents and change
• Lead incident, problem, risk and change management across the full service lifecycle
• Act as a senior escalation point during major incidents, providing calm, authoritative leadership
• Set and evolve HMRC’s service management strategy, influencing product, engineering and commercial decisions
• Establish, manage and assure SLAs and OLAs across internal teams and suppliers
• Hold suppliers to account for service outcomes and contractual performance
• Balance delivery of new functionality with protection of live services, making evidence‑based trade‑offs
• Apply ITIL and service management frameworks pragmatically to improve outcomes
• Ensure strong asset, configuration and service data supports decision‑making
• Drive continuous improvement through insight, metrics and learning from incidents
• Build and lead resilient, high‑performing teams capable of operating under sustained pressure

Who this role is for

This is a role for a senior service leader who:

• Has led business‑critical live services at scale
• Is confident making high‑impact decisions with incomplete information
• Can influence and challenge senior technical, commercial and business stakeholders
• Has experience leading managers and senior practitioners
• Communicates clearly and calmly in crisis situations
• Understands risk, resilience and recovery in complex IT environments

Essential experience

You’ll bring:

• Substantial experience across the systems development lifecycle, with a strong live‑service focus
• Proven leadership of major incidents with significant business impact
• Broad understanding of IT architecture and live operations
• Strong operational risk and service resilience expertise
• Experience managing suppliers within formal contractual frameworks
• Understanding of service monitoring, performance and continuous improvement
• Experience balancing delivery of large programmes with live service protection

Interested?

This partner post gives you the overview.

Click through to the full Civil Service Jobs advert to view full details and apply.