Service Operations Lead | Networks

** Eligibility for Security Clearance (SC) and Police Personnel Vetting (PPV3) is required. Applicants must have a minimum of 5 consecutive years' UK residency or working history. ** The Role In a Nutshell Own the technical health of a live, business-critical managed service end to end, 24x7x365, for one of the UK's most demanding enterprise customers. This is the role for an engineer who wants to be the definitive technical authority on a service: the person who leads the room during major incidents, challenges the status quo, and turns complex networking estates into stable, resilient, improving platforms. The Business One of the UK's most established communications and technology businesses, serving large enterprise and public-sector customers with mission-critical networks, voice and managed services. With significant annual investment in research and development and a substantial UK engineering workforce, this business has the scale, the technology and the customer base to take on the country's most complex programmes. The business invests genuinely in career development, world-class training, and the kind of work that accelerates a technical career. The Role As the Service Operations Lead, you'll provide deep technical support and end-to-end ownership for maintaining the service. You won't be buried in a ticket queue; you'll be the main technical point of contact during live service, linking customers, internal resolver teams, suppliers and third parties for the complex decisions that keep services stable and secure. You'll assess complex in-life changes and clearly explain impact, risk and options to customers, account teams and delivery partners. When major incidents hit, you'll lead them to resolution, coordinating multiple teams, challenging delays and cutting through unclear ownership to protect customer outcomes. Beyond the day-to-day, you'll actively manage the technical estate, spotting capacity limits, end-of-life risks and vulnerabilities before they bite. You'll challenge current designs, propose improvements that increase performance and resilience, and keep documentation sharp. This is a role built on authority, influence and genuine technical credibility across networking technology., Own the technical health of the live service end to end, ensuring changes, incidents and improvements protect customer outcomesAssess complex in-life changes and clearly explain impact, risk and options to customers, account teams and delivery partnersAct as the main technical point of contact during live service, linking customers, internal teams and partners for complex decisionsLead complex incidents to resolution, coordinating multiple teams and challenging delays or unclear ownershipWork with internal resolver teams, suppliers and third parties to operate stable services and resolve issues quicklyChallenge current designs and propose improvements that increase performance, resilience and valueActively manage the technical estate, identifying capacity limits, end-of-life risks, vulnerabilities and required actionsBuild trusted relationships with customers, suppliers and internal teams, influencing through expertise and authorityKeep all technical documentation accurate and up to date Other skills required: Technical Authority - Credibility to set technical direction, interpret standards and make defensible, risk-based decisions others trustIncident Leadership - Ability to take control during major incidents, maintain situational awareness and drive clear comms to timely restorationStakeholder Influence - Exceptional communication skills, building rapport with customers and suppliers and influencing through expertise rather than authority aloneImprovement Mindset - A proactive instinct for spotting risk and inefficiency early and driving meaningful service improvementCoaching & Knowledge Transfer - Ability to upskill operational teams, transferring customer-specific knowledge and technical insight

Technical accreditation to Professional or Specialist level (or equivalent), with a strong working knowledge of ITIL practicesProven experience technically supporting a 24/7 live managed customer solution across networking technology, working with a host of third parties and suppliersStrong technical governance and risk-based decision making, with the ability to set and interpret technical standards and make defensible decisionsDemonstrable incident leadership and operational control, coordinating stakeholders and driving timely restoration under pressureDeep end-to-end service understanding, including how upstream and downstream dependencies affect outcomes in productionStrong stakeholder management and the ability to communicate complex technical issues clearlyAbility to obtain and hold all required clearances (SC, NPPV, etc.) The following would be an advantage: Strong understanding of network and software-defined networking technologies (Cisco, Aruba, Juniper, Fortinet, Nutanix, AWS, Azure)Exposure to emerging technologies across the full IT spectrumAutomation and observability experience: tooling, dashboards, alert tuning and runbooksCommercial awareness of SLAs, OLAs, penalties and regulatory expectations

• 10% on-target annual bonus* 10% company pension scheme* Company share saving schemes* 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing with service* World-class training and development opportunities* Wide range of flexible benefits* Hybrid working: 3 days on site, 2 days remote keywords: service operations lead, network operations lead, technical service manager, technical operations authority, toa specialist, itil, incident management, managed services, network engineer, 24/7 support, technical governance, stakeholder management, service management, network operations, sc clearance, nppv, observability, automation, cisco, fortinet, juniper, aruba, sd-wan, belfast, telecoms