Lead Service Architect

Location

London (hybrid working) – ad-hoc visits to Glasgow

Duration

12 months +

Vetting

SC security clearance required to start (DV application upon starting)

Must‑have candidate criteria

• Lead service architecture – Lead Service Architect or equivalent on a major digital, cloud, secure, defence, national security, regulated or large enterprise transformation.
• Operational readiness and acceptance – Designed readiness gates, operational acceptance criteria, runbooks, handover models and go/no-go evidence for products moving into live service.
• Service transition and dual‑run – Experience transitioning from legacy to new services, including phased migration, pilots, early adopters, staged onboarding or dual‑run operations.
• Applied ITIL service management – Practical ITIL‑aligned process design across incident, problem, change, release, request, configuration, knowledge and service level management.
• Multi‑tier/federated support – Designed support tiers, escalation paths, service boundaries, RACIs and OLAs across internal teams, suppliers and partner/user organisations.
• Secure/high‑assurance context – Worked in secure, regulated, defence, national security, critical infrastructure, public sector or similarly complex enterprise environments. UK SECRET experience is highly desirable, but not the only route in.
• Supplier and SIAM integration – Understands multi‑supplier models, retained organisation responsibilities, supplier handoffs, performance measures and operational governance.
• Commercial/service proposition awareness – Understands how service architecture connects to catalogue, service tiers, standard versus custom requests, supplier obligations, SLAs and cost‑to‑serve.
• Stakeholder leadership and delivery – Can work across senior, technical, operational, commercial, security, supplier and partner stakeholders, turning ambiguity into usable artefacts at pace.

Useful but not essential

• ServiceNow awareness, particularly ITSM, CSM, CMDB, service portal, reporting and dashboards.
• Cloud service operations, public sector/cross‑government or defence delivery experience.
• Experience contributing to business case evidence, including operating model, deliverability, transition and cost assumptions.
• Awareness of FinOps, charging models, service catalogue development, DDaT capability mapping, or Jira Service Management as an interim front door.

Our client operates hybrid working 2-3 days into London, with occasional client site visits will be required into Glasgow.

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