Senior IT Service Manager

Job summary

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

1. joining up public sector services
2. harnessing the power of AI for the public good
3. strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
4. elevating leadership and investing in talent
5. funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
6. committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.

We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.

Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.

Job description

As the Senior IT Service Manager for One Login, you will provide the strategic leadership, vision and direction needed to build an industry leading service management capability that operates effectively at national scale. Reporting to the Head of Live Services for One Login, you will be accountable for shaping how government services experience, adopt and rely on One Login, ensuring that service quality, resilience and user experience remain consistently high across a diverse and rapidly expanding ecosystem.

You will lead the development of a coherent, future focused service management strategy that supports One Login’s long-term ambitions and the needs of the wider government landscape. This includes defining or refining the operating model, governance structures, assurance frameworks and performance measures that will underpin a mature, scalable and data driven service management function. You will ensure that the differing technical, operational and support requirements of relying parties are understood, prioritised and translated into clear service outcomes, enabling each service to onboard, operate and evolve with confidence.

Your role will involve close partnership with senior leaders and staff across Product, Architecture, Service Transition, Operational Support, Data and Security teams. You will act as a voice for service excellence, ensuring that service considerations are embedded into decision making, delivery planning and change processes across the One Login service. You will also represent One Login at cross government forums where necessary, shaping expectations, influencing direction and ensuring alignment with broader digital and identity strategies.

As a senior leader for the service management function within One Login, you will shape and develop IT Service Managers, Service Relationship Managers and other service capability teams. You will foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement and customer-centricity, ensuring that teams are empowered, skilled and supported to deliver high quality services. You will champion best practice, drive standardisation and ensure that service management evolves in line with industry standards, emerging technologies and the needs of government.

Ultimately, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that One Login delivers a reliable, secure and seamless experience for millions of users and hundreds of government services, now and in the future.

As a Senior IT Service Manager you’ll be:

• accountable for the end-to-end strategic service experience for all relying parties, ensuring that government services adopting One Login receive a consistent, high quality and resilient service that meets their operational, technical and security needs at national scale.
• building and maintaining relationships across government, acting as the primary strategic partner for Relying Party leadership teams. You will ensure their priorities, risks and future needs are understood, anticipated and reflected in service planning, investment decisions and roadmap development.
• shaping and governing the relying party lifecycle, identifying structural gaps, systemic issues and opportunities for improvement across onboarding, transition, live service and ongoing optimisation. You will drive the evolution of these processes from a service perspective to ensure they are efficient, scalable and aligned to One Login’s long-term ambitions.
• leading continuous improvement across the entire service ecosystem, using data, insight and user feedback to enhance service performance, simplify interactions, reduce friction and improve the overall experience for relying parties.
• setting direction and standards for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan, aligning with industry standards, mapping approach, templates and setting approach for ongoing improvements through testing and lessons learned exercises.
• acting as the senior point of escalation for critical service issues, ensuring that major incidents, risks and cross government challenges are managed effectively. You will provide authoritative input into governance boards, service forums and strategic decision making groups.
• overseeing and sponsoring service reviews, audits, incident investigations and improvement programmes, ensuring that lessons are embedded, systemic issues are addressed and service maturity continues to advance.
• driving the evolution of the One Login service management model, working closely with Product, Architecture, Service Transition, Operational Support, Data and Security to ensure service management is embedded into design, delivery and operational practices across the organisation.
• providing leadership, direction and development to IT Service Managers, Service Relationship Managers and other service capability teams, ensuring they are empowered, skilled and aligned to a shared vision of service excellence.

Person specification

We’re interested in people who:

• have a deep understanding of end-to-end service lifecycle management, and by using your analytical skills to make decisions that enhance our business and service performance you will help shape, design, govern and evolve onboarding, transition, operational management, versioning and deprecation processes at scale into a central service offering for our relying parties
• are comfortable taking full ownership and accountability for the service experience of relying parties, regardless of their size, maturity or technical complexity, and able to balance competing priorities across a diverse portfolio while standardising the service landscape.
• have strong negotiation and influencing skills, with the credibility to engage stakeholders across government, challenge constructively, and secure alignment on service priorities, risks and investment decisions
• are able to build long-term, strategic relationships, communicating clearly, managing expectations, and ensuring that service decisions reflect both Relying Party needs and organisational goals
• have proven ability to oversee, optimise and transform operational processes at scale, using data, insight and industry best practice to drive continuous improvement, standardisation and efficiency
• have experienced acting as the senior escalation point for live service issues, seeing the bigger picture by taking groups of services and investigating how to get the best of those underlying services you will be bringing a calm, structured and authoritative approach to incident management, risk handling and cross-government coordination
• are a natural leader, who can develop and inspire service management teams, fostering a culture of accountability, customer-centricity and continuous improvement, leading investigative work into problems and opportunities in existing processes, improving the service experience and by absorbing large amounts of conflicting information you will use it to produce strategic solutions for our service management customers

Benefits

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for the King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

Office attendance
The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

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

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and cover letter of up to 750 words. Important tip - please ensure that your cover letter includes how you meet the skills and experience listed in the “person specification” section above
• a 90 minute video interview, as part of the interview there will be a presentation task, details of the presentation task will be shared with the shortlisted candidates in advance of interviews.

Depending on how many applications we get, there might also be an extra stage before the video interview, for example a phone interview or a technical exercise.

In the event we receive a high volume of applications, we will conduct the initial sift against the lead criteria which is:

• have a deep understanding of end-to-end service lifecycle management, and by using your analytical skills to make decisions that enhance our business and service performance you will help shape, design, govern and evolve onboarding, transition, operational management, versioning and deprecation processes at scale into a central service offering for our relying parties

In the Civil Service, we use Success Profiles to evaluate your skills and ability. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, increases performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We’ll be assessing your technical abilities, skills, experience and behaviours that are relevant to this role.

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• leadership
• communicating and influencing
• managing a quality service
• delivering at pace

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework for the Senior IT Service Manager role:

• IT service reporting
• ownership and initiative
• service focus
• service management framework knowledge
• stakeholder relationship management (IT operations)
• strategic thinking
• technical understanding
• user focus

Want to know more about who Government Digital and Data are? Click Here

Recruitment Timeline

Sift completion: week commencing Monday 6th April 2026

Panel interviews: week commencing Monday 13th April 2026

Candidates that do not pass the interview but have demonstrated an acceptable standard may be considered for similar roles at a lower grade.

A reserve list will be held for a period of 12 months, from which further appointments can be made.

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.

Please note that this role requires SC clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. This is not an absolute requirement, but supplementary checks may be needed where individuals have not lived in the UK for that period. This may mean your security clearance (and therefore your appointment) will take longer or, in some cases, not be possible.

For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers.

Sponsorship

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).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.

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

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).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 : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk
• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should contact gds-complaints@dsit.gov.uk in the first instance.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive you can contact the Civil Service Commission by email: info@csc.gov.uk Or in writing: Civil Service Commission, Room G/8 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.