Technical Operations Manager

Sword is a leading provider of business technology solutions within the Energy, Public and Finance Sectors, driving real transformation change within our clients. We use proven technology, specialist teams and domain expertise to build solid technical foundations across platforms, data and business applications. We have a passion for using technology to solve business problems, working in partnership with our clients to help in achieving their goals.

We are seeking an experienced Technical Operations Manager to lead our Technical Operations function across Digital Workplace, Infrastructure, Cloud Platforms, Application Support, Integration, and Database Services. You'll drive operational excellence, service performance, and customer outcomes while leading operational teams as one cohesive function.

What the role looks like :

• Lead the Technical Operations function across digital workplace, infrastructure, cloud platforms, application support, integration and database services.
• Hold accountability for operational performance, service maturity, customer outcomes and delivery against agreed service commitments.
• Manage the grouped operational leads as one function, establishing consistent standards for service ownership, observability, automation, escalation and continual improvement.
• Use monitoring, observability, incident, problem and capacity data to assess service health, improve decisions and target corrective action.
• Reduce recurring incidents, alert noise and manual effort by improving runbooks, automation and standard operating practices.
• Ensure service performance, operational risk and improvement progress are clearly evidenced through reporting, service reviews and outcome-based measures.
• Own operational readiness for new customers, services and changes, including monitoring, knowledge, access, support models, escalation paths and acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate patching, maintenance, lifecycle, capacity and vulnerability-remediation activity, making risks and ownership visible.
• Protect managed-service boundaries by identifying project delivery, development activity, material change and out-of-scope demand that require separate governance or commercial treatment.
• Recruit, coach, develop and performance-manage the Technical Operations leadership and engineering teams, while directing workload, priorities, escalations and major-incident response.
• This is a key leadership role focused on service ownership, automation, observability, continual improvement, and delivering reliable, high-quality technology services across the business.

Requirements

• Proven experience leading multidisciplinary technical operations or Managed Services teams.
• Strong knowledge of Managed Services operating models and practices, including service ownership, transition, operational readiness, incident, problem, change, capacity and continual improvement.
• Experience using observability, monitoring, logging, event correlation and service-health data to improve performance, increase visibility and guide operational decisions.
• Ability to turn operational evidence into practical action that reduces recurring incidents, alert noise, manual effort, service risk and poor customer experience.
• Experience identifying, prioritising and governing automation across operational tasks, runbooks, recovery activities, reporting and service assurance.
• Strong working knowledge of ITSM platforms and practices, including ticket quality, SLA and XLA reporting, escalation management, problem management and service-review preparation.
• Experience leading evidence-based customer reporting and governance, clearly explaining service performance, risk, improvement progress, required decisions and delivered value.
• Sound operational risk and commercial judgement across patching, vulnerabilities, lifecycle, backup, capacity, availability, resilience, service scope, profitability and chargeable change.
• Proven ability to lead customer onboarding, service transition, operational acceptance, major incidents and escalations with clear authority and disciplined communication.
• Direct people-management experience covering recruitment, onboarding, coaching, performance management, capability planning and career development, supported where possible by a relevant service-management or leadership qualification.

Benefits

At Sword, our core values and culture are based on caring about our people, investing in training and career development and building inclusive teams where we are all encouraged to contribute to achieve success.

We offer comprehensive benefits designed to support your professional development and enhance your overall quality of life. In addition to a Competitive Salary, here's what you can expect as part of our benefits package:

Personalised Career Development: We create a development plan customised to your goals and aspirations, with a range of learning and development opportunities within a culture that encourages growth.

Flexible working: Flexible work arrangements to support your work-life balance. We can’t promise to always be able to meet every request, however are keen to discuss your individual preferences to make it work where we can.

A Fantastic Benefits Package: This includes generous annual leave allowance, enhanced family friendly benefits, pension scheme, access to private health, well-being, and insurance schemes, an employee assistance programme, discounted cash plan and more…..

At Sword we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer, ensuring that all applicants receive fair and equal consideration for employment, regardless of whether they meet every requirement. If you don’t tick all the boxes but feel you have some of the relevant skills and experience we’re looking for, please do consider applying and highlight your transferable skills and experience. We embrace diversity in all its forms, valuing individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. Your perspective and potential are important to us.

If we can do anything to help make the hiring process more accessible, please let our talent acquisition team know when you apply so we can support any adjustments.