DDaT Transition Lead

Job summary

We are seeking an experienced and proactive Transition Lead to join our IT department. The successful candidate will play a pivotal role in managing the full change enablement system, overseeing IT service outages, and ensuring the seamless acceptance of all changed and new systems into live service support.

Job description

The postholder's main accountabilities will be to:

• Lead the end-to-end change enablement process, ensuring all IT changes are managed efficiently, effectively, and in line with organisational policies.
• Coordinate and oversee IT service outages, minimising disruption and communicating effectively with stakeholders throughout the process.
• Manage the transition of systems and services from project delivery into live operational support, ensuring robust acceptance criteria are met.
• Develop and maintain transition plans, risk assessments, and mitigation strategies for all changes and new systems.
• Work closely with project teams, service owners, and technical specialists to ensure readiness for live service.
• Monitor and report on transition progress, escalating issues as required and driving continuous improvement.
• Facilitate training and knowledge transfer to operational teams as part of the transition process.
• Champion best practices in change management, transition, and service acceptance.
• Cutover and go-live management: developing runbooks, coordinating technical teams during cutover windows, managing back-out plans, and ensuring hypercare arrangements are in place.

Who we are

Acas exists to make working life better for everyone in Britain. We are the experts in workplace matters, we’re impartial, so we’re not on anyone’s side. That means we’re working for everyone to help prevent, manage and resolve workplace issues.

Acas helps employers and employees by providing information, advice, training, conciliation and other services that prevent, manage or resolve workplace problems.

Acas: Britain’s Workplace Experts

Acas has been recognised for its Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace from the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion awards; it has been Disability Confident Highly Commended, a Pay Gap award winner, and an Overall winner for public sector organisations. Acas is committed to providing services and developing policies which embrace diversity, promote equality of opportunity and eliminate unlawful discrimination.

Person specification

The successful candidate will have the following:

Essential Technical criteria

• Change and release tooling: hands-on use of ITSM platforms (e.g., ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Ivanti, Freshservice) to raise/assess/approve changes, schedule releases, manage CAB workflows, and produce audit-ready reporting (Lead).
• Operational monitoring and support readiness: familiarity with monitoring/alerting and logging concepts (e.g., thresholds, on-call, escalation paths) and ensuring these are defined before go-live (Lead).
• Incident, problem and major incident interfaces: understanding how changes impact stability; ability to coordinate with incident/problem management to reduce risk and capture learning from PIRs (Lead).
• Strong understanding of IT service management frameworks (e.g., ITIL).
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple transitions simultaneously in a fast-paced environment.
• Analytical skills with a strong attention to detail.
• Experience in risk management and mitigation.
• Experience transitioning cloud and/or SaaS services (e.g., Microsoft 365, Azure/AWS), including identity/access, security, and service continuity considerations.
• Understanding of IT controls and compliance expectations (e.g., ISO 27001-aligned controls, audit evidence, change traceability).

Essential Experience criteria

• Experience coordinating planned outages and maintenance windows, including stakeholder communications, CAB/ECAB support, and risk-based scheduling to minimise customer impact (Lead).
• Experience in large-scale IT change programmes.
• Familiarity with service desk and incident management tools.
• Continuous improvement mindset with experience streamlining workflows, standardising templates, and coaching teams on best practice.
• Environment readiness: experience coordinating non-production and production readiness activities (access, monitoring, backup, patching, capacity, DR considerations) aligned to service requirements.
• Service acceptance and transition deliverables: creation and quality assurance of transition plans, acceptance checklists, operational support models, support handover packs, and knowledge articles.
• Supplier/third-party coordination: managing deliverables, timelines, and service acceptance inputs from external vendors and hosting/managed service partners.
• Documentation: confident producing/maintaining RAID logs, dependency maps, RACI, change calendars, communication plans, and weekly status reporting.
• Demonstrable experience leading IT service transition and/or change enablement activities within a structured ITSM environment.
• Proven ability to plan and govern go-lives, including readiness assessments, acceptance criteria, cutover/runbook creation, and post-implementation review.

Desirable criteria (this will be assessed in the event of tie-breaker scenarios at the Sift and Interview stages)

• Configuration management (CMDB) awareness: experience ensuring service and CI records are created/updated, ownership is assigned, and key relationships are captured as part of service onboarding.
• Familiarity with service desk and incident management tools.
• Experience operating within formal governance (CAB/ECAB) and producing KPI reporting (change success rate, lead time, emergency change trends, PIR completion).
• Prince2 Foundation Certificate
• Project management experience.
• Strong working knowledge of ITIL practices, particularly Change Enablement, Release Management, Service Validation and Testing, Knowledge Management, and Service Configuration Management.

Qualifications

It is a necessity for this role that candidates already possess the following at the time of application:

- ITIL 4 Foundation Certificate in Service Management
- ITIL Service Management Practitioner Certificate in Release Management

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Big Picture

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £46,750, Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service contributes £13,543 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

We’re big believers in rewarding people for the amazing work they do. Take a look at some of the fantastic benefits we offer:

• Learning and Development
• Health and wellbeing
• Pension scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Volunteering opportunities

Could you ask for anymore?

You’ll have access to a Lifestyle website where you’ll be able to grab savings on a wide range of products, from holidays to your weekly shop.

To find out more, check out: Working for Acas

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.

How to apply

Please click on the 'Apply now' button.

As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete:

• An evidence-based Personal Statement and CV reflecting the Essential Technical and Experience requirements as listed in the Person Specification section of this advert. Your Personal Statement should be no longer than 1,250 words. It should avoid generalised assertions, instead including specific examples of achievements, explaining the degree of challenge, what you did and the outcomes.
• A 250-word statement for each of the following Behaviours: Making Effective Decisions; Delivering at Pace; Seeing the Bigger Picture.
• A separate 500-word statement reflecting the Desirable criteria as listed in the Person Specification section of this advert.
  

Should a large number of applications be received, an initial sift may be conducted using the:

• Lead Essential Technical criterion: Change and release tooling: hands-on use of ITSM platforms (e.g., ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Ivanti, Freshservice) to raise/assess/approve changes, schedule releases, manage CAB workflows, and produce audit-ready reporting
• Lead Essential Technical criterion: Operational monitoring and support readiness: familiarity with monitoring/alerting and logging concepts (e.g., thresholds, on-call, escalation paths) and ensuring these are defined before go-live
• Lead Essential Technical criterion: Incident, problem and major incident interfaces: understanding how changes impact stability; ability to coordinate with incident/problem management to reduce risk and capture learning from PIRs
• Lead Essential Experience criterion: Experience coordinating planned outages and maintenance windows, including stakeholder communications, CAB/ECAB support, and risk-based scheduling to minimise customer impact

Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift of all the above requirements or progressed straight to interview.

If a large number of applications meet the minimum standard an interview wait list may be created for this position. This means that if you have met the minimum requirements at sift you may be placed at a ‘Hold’ status for up to 12 months and if we are able to invite you to an interview we will be in touch.

Interview Details

If you have successfully passed sift at the application stage, you will be invited to an interview which will either take place via Microsoft Teams or Face-to-Face, and which will take place from the week commencing 11 May 2026.

It will be a Behaviours, Strengths, and Experience based interview, and it will also include a Presentation (the presentation question and instructions will be sent to candidates who are invited to interview).

The following Behaviours will be assessed at Interview:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Bigger Picture

A reserve list will be created for this position; this means that if you have passed the interview, but we cannot immediately offer you this position, you will be placed on a reserve list for 12 months and may be considered for similar positions during that time.

Reasonable Adjustments

As a Disability Confident Leader, Acas is committed to creating an inclusive recruitment process. If you have a disability and feel that any part of the recruitment process puts you at a disadvantage, we will work with you to make Reasonable Adjustments that support your needs. If you require any changes to help you apply:

• Please contact the Acas Recruitment Team via HRrecruitment@acas.org.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
• Please complete the “Assistance Required” section on the “Additional Requirements” page of your application form to let us know about any adjustments or support you may need during the recruitment process. For example, this might include accessibility arrangements for entering a building or interview room, communication support, modifications to assessment methods, etc.
• You can find out more about the Disability Confident Scheme and Reasonable Adjustments by clicking these links.

Want to learn more about Civil Service recruitment? You can find out more on Civil Service Careers, including information on Success Profiles, writing a Personal Statement, acceptable use of Artificial Intelligence, and what to expect at Interview.

For applicants requiring a visa to work in the UK

Please be advised that Acas does not hold a UKVI Sponsorship Licence, so we cannot consider sponsoring a visa applicant or issuing a Certificate of Sponsorship.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : HR Recruitment Team
• Email : HRRecruitment@acas.org.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : HRRecruitment@acas.org.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Code and wish to make a complaint, you should contact us on via HRrecruitment@acas.org.uk in the first instance. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from us, you can contact the Civil Service Commission.

Attachments

Job Description - Grade 8 DDaT Transition Lead Opens in new window (docx, 47kB)