Lead Service Architect

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.

Do you have experience in ServiceNow?