Lead IT Service Manager
| Posting date: | 01 May 2026 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £69,501 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 15 May 2026 |
| Location: | Swansea |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 458477/1 |
Summary
Do you have the ability to lead the work of engineering teams in maintaining and improving critical services through high‑pressure operational and strategic challenges?
Are you able to communicate effectively at senior levels with business and technical stakeholders alike?
If so, we would love to hear from you.
Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:
- Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
- 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays and a privilege day for the King’s birthday
- Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.
Read more in the Benefits section below!
Find out more about what it's like working at Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - Department for Transport Careers
As a Lead IT Service Manager at DVLA, you will provide senior leadership and accountability for all aspects of IT Service Management (ITSM) across one of DVLA’s three major service towers: Drivers, Vehicles or Core (underpinning services or those spanning Drivers and Vehicles). You will act as the senior focal point for your tower, ensuring services are delivered effectively, efficiently and in line with industry best practice.
You will be accountable for IT service ownership across a large and diverse portfolio of services, including responsibility for the effective and efficient operation of fourteen distinct ITSM practices / functions, ensuring continual alignment to evolving industry best practice.
For the most business‑critical and complex services, you will act directly as the IT Service Manager, providing hands‑on leadership and expert judgement. You will lead major cross‑functional activities involving engineering teams, delivery teams, operational and non‑operational business areas, and third‑party suppliers.
You will lead and mentor senior ITSM professionals within your tower, building a strong, multi‑skilled capability with a culture of accountability, collaboration and continual improvement. You will also act as a senior escalation point for service risks and issues, representing ITSM at senior forums across the Agency and externally.
This role is at the heart of ensuring the availability, performance, security and continual improvement of DVLA’s IT services, many of which are business‑critical, public‑facing and nationally significant.
Your responsibilities will include, but aren’t limited to:
- Provide direct, hands-on leadership for the most business critical and / or highest complexity ITSM activities arising from all work across your service tower. This includes major cross-functional / matrix leadership of resources spanning all ITS capabilities, other DVLA directorates (operational and non-operational) and external partner / supplier organisations.
- Be accountable for the overall line management and mentorship of all resources within your service tower. Work with other Lead IT Service Managers to re-assign resources between the services towers as required, according to both day-to-day operational ITSM demands, e.g. Incident and Change, alongside strategic, longer-term work such as Service Architecture and Transition.
- Ensure that your team holds holistic knowledge of all services within its tower, i.e. their business purpose and context, underpinning technology, support model and stakeholders. For the most business critical services, hold this knowledge yourself.
- Hold and proactively maintain expert level knowledge of ITSM industry best practice, staying abreast of evolving industry trends including how ITSM interfaces with other modern industry philosophies adopted at DVLA, such as DevOps and Agile. Be accountable for disseminating and ensuring application of this throughout all work within your service tower.
- Hold a thorough understanding of technical concepts, sufficient to lead major cross-functional efforts involving lead / senior engineering resources, making effective ITSM decisions based on significant levels of technical information.
Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills they need. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public.
For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.
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