Overview
Tech Lead, Service Desk – Norstella
Location: London, United Kingdom
Employment Type: Full Time
Job ID: R-1927
About Norstella
Norstella is a premier and critical global life sciences data and AI solutions provider dedicated to improving patient access to life-saving therapies. Norstella supports pharmaceutical and biotech companies across the full drug development lifecycle — from pipeline to patient. Our mission is to help our clients bring therapies to market faster and more efficiently, ultimately impacting patient lives.
Norstella unites market-leading brands – Citeline, Evaluate, MMIT, Panalgo, Skipta and The Dedham Group and delivers must-have answers and insights, leveraging AI, for critical strategic, clinical, and commercial decision-making. We help our clients:
- Accelerate the drug development cycle
- Assess competition and bring the right drugs to market
- Make data driven commercial and financial decisions
- Match and recruit patients for clinical trials
- Identify and address barriers to therapies
Norstella serves most pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world, along with regulators like the FDA, and payers. By providing critical proprietary data supporting AI-driven workflows, Norstella helps clients make decisions faster and with greater confidence. Norstella’s investments in AI are transforming how data is consumed and decisions are made, disrupting inefficient legacy workflows and helping the industry become more efficient, innovative, and responsive to patient needs.
Job description
The Global L2 Manager is a senior operational leader responsible for overseeing Norstella’s Level 2 IT Operations function across multiple time zones, including India and North America. This role extends beyond technical escalation management and serves as a foundational pillar in maintaining operational stability, endpoint governance, identity administration, and office infrastructure reliability.
The L2 Manager leads a distributed team of engineers who handle complex escalations from L1, advanced onboarding and offboarding tasks, Entra ID administration, and cross-system troubleshooting. This individual ensures seamless global coverage, consistent SLA performance, and strong escalation governance between L1, L2, and L3 teams.
In addition to escalation leadership, the role owns the lifecycle of end-user devices globally, ensures compliance with endpoint standards, and maintains operational readiness across all Norstella office locations. The L2 Manager acts as both a technical authority and an operational strategist, driving efficiency, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Responsibilities
Global L2 Operations Leadership: Oversee a globally distributed team, ensure 24/5 coverage across regions and continuity of service across time zones. Be accountable for queue health, SLA compliance, ticket aging, and overall operational performance. Proactively identify bottlenecks, manage workload distribution, and ensure high-quality resolution of escalated incidents.
Escalation & ServiceNow Governance: Own the escalation workflow within ServiceNow, ensure proper triage, categorization, and documentation of advanced incidents. Review all escalations to L3 for completeness and technical validity. Drive root cause analysis and collaborate with engineering to reduce repeat incidents through better documentation, automation, or systemic fixes.
Identity & Access Oversight (Entra ID / Azure AD): Govern advanced identity-related escalations, including account provisioning, access control validation, and complex onboarding/offboarding workflows. Collaborate with Security and Infrastructure to ensure identity processes align with compliance standards and policy.
End-User Device Lifecycle Management: Own global device lifecycle, including procurement coordination, imaging standards, provisioning, shipping logistics, recovery, and asset tracking. Ensure endpoint compliance (Intune, encryption, security agents) and precise onboarding/offboarding processes.
Office IT Infrastructure Ownership: Ensure operational readiness of all Norstella office environments globally, including internet circuits, ISP relationships, networking equipment, conference room AV systems, and local IT hardware. Coordinate with facilities and external vendors to ensure uptime and professional workplace technology experiences.
Onsite Leadership – London Office: Serve as the primary onsite IT leader for Norstella’s London office. First point of escalation for in-person technical support, office infrastructure stability, conference room systems, executive support, and local user experience. Requires a strong physical presence in the office with a minimum expectation of four days per week onsite to ensure operational readiness, hands-on troubleshooting, vendor coordination, and direct partnership with business stakeholders.
Knowledge Management & Documentation Governance: Establish and enforce knowledge base standards for the L2 organization. Ensure documentation is updated, peer-reviewed, and used to reduce ticket volume and improve first-touch resolution. Facilitate knowledge transfer from L3 to L2 and foster continuous learning.
Metrics, Reporting & Continuous Improvement: Develop and track operational metrics (SLA adherence, escalation rates, reopen trends, queue aging, first-touch resolution). Identify automation opportunities and process improvements. Provide regular reporting to IT leadership.
Qualifications
5–8+ years of IT Operations or ServiceDesk experience
2–4+ years of leadership experience managing distributed teams
Deep understanding of ServiceNow incident and request workflows
Strong experience with Entra ID / Azure AD administration
Experience managing device lifecycle and endpoint compliance programs
Familiarity with office network infrastructure and ISP/vendor management
Strong analytical, communication, and leadership skills
Success in this role is demonstrated through sustained SLA performance, reduced unnecessary L3 escalations, mature and accurate knowledge documentation, strong endpoint compliance posture, stable global office infrastructure, and a highly capable, accountable L2 engineering team.
Guiding Principles
01: Bold, Passionate, Mission-First
02: Integrity, Truth, Reality
03: Kindness, Empathy, Grace
04: Resilience, Mettle, Perseverance
05: Humility, Gratitude, Learning
Benefits
25 days annual leave, 4 days for volunteering and a personal day
5% pension match
Group Life Assurance (100% employer funded)
Group Income Protection (100% employer funded)
Other voluntary benefits such as: Dental, Cash Plan, PMI Excess Cover, Health Screening & Critical Illness
Norstella is an equal opportunities employer and does not discriminate on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, gender reassignment, race, color, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability or age. Our ethos is to respect and value people’s differences, to help everyone achieve more at work as well as in their personal lives so that they feel proud of the part they play in our success. We believe that all decisions about people at work should be based on the individual’s abilities, skills, performance and behavior and our business requirements. Norstella operates a zero tolerance policy to any form of discrimination, abuse or harassment.
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