IT Service Manager - Cloud Platforms

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.

This IT Service Manager role will be working in Digital Services Directorate. The Platform Enablement service is the entry point, triage, prioritisation and technical leadership capability for Corporate Platform Engineering. It assesses work package definitions from architecture and the business, for delivery across our platform infrastructure estate. As part of wider digital delivery, our aim is to provide 'paved roads' to developer and application teams, accelerating delivery via reusable patterns and underpinning shared services.

As a IT Service Manager within the Corporate Platform Engineering branch of Digital Services, you will be part of the Corporate Platform Enablement Team which provides technical oversight, Delivery and Service Management for the Platform Engineering branch of Corporate IT Services. The team will work closely across Divisions and Directorates and will support multiple areas including Compute, Storage and Backup, Build and Deploy, Connectivity and Infrastructure Services, working alongside Engineers, Architects and Delivery Managers to mature the Platform Enablement service which is the 'front door' to platform Engineering for Digital Services.

You will work with technical teams across cloud, infrastructure and connectivity services to define service offerings, standards, support boundaries and shared responsibilities. The role offers opportunities to develop knowledge of platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Broadcom while ensuring services remain reliable, secure and supportable.

You will establish meaningful KPIs and success criteria, using service performance, operational insight and customer feedback to measure effectiveness and drive continual improvement. As a point of contact for customers across the organisation, you will build trusted relationships, champion the customer experience and ensure that services have clear ownership, service-level expectations, operational readiness and escalation routes. You will also provide assurance for change, service transition and major incidents, ensuring that service management considerations are embedded throughout the platform lifecycle.

Responsibilities

As an IT Service Manager, you will:

• Develop and mature the Platform Enablement service, defining its service offer, standards, support boundaries and continual improvement priorities.
• Provide IT service management across public cloud, private cloud, data centre, connectivity and shared infrastructure services.
• Establish meaningful KPIs, service-level expectations and success criteria, using them to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of Platform Enablement.
• Monitor and report on service performance, bringing together service health, availability, change outcomes, operational risks, customer feedback and improvement activity.
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with customers and senior stakeholders across the wider organisation, acting as a point of contact for Platform Enablement.
• Champion the customer experience, ensuring that services are accessible, responsive and designed around clear customer needs and organisational outcomes.
• Embed the Corporate Platform Engineering shared responsibility model, ensuring that service ownership, support boundaries, accountabilities and escalation routes are understood and documented.
• Use incidents, problems, service and customer feedback data to identify recurring issues and prioritise improvements.
• Provide service advocacy and support during major incidents and significant service issues, coordinating customer communications, escalation and post-incident learning across the relevant service teams.

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Security Clearance

For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.

At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:

• Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
• UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
• Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
• Security Services records

Please note: We will reach out to you once the advert has closed to confirm eligibility for this role, this will be via an e-mail. Please check you e-mails.

Visa Sponsorship

ONS are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants are expected to hold a valid right to work in the UK when employment commences. If you are applying on a time-limited visa, this will need to be valid for at least 18 months at point of application.

To work at the ONS, candidates must meet both UK right to work and security clearance requirements (where applicable).

If you are unsure whether you meet the appropriate right to work or security clearance eligibility criteria, please refer to the guidance on Gov.uk or contact the recruitment email provided in the advert before applying. Failure to meet these requirements will result in your application being rejected and employment offers being withdrawn.

Application Process

Number of Stages: 2 stage process

Stage 1: Application

Stage 2: Interview

Stage 1 – Application

The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, CV, skills, experience, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.

A personal statement is required at application stage, the maximum word count allowed is 1250 words, which should not be exceeded. You should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).

Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.

In instances where a high number of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted, and candidates will be invited to interview based on merit order, i.e., those with the highest scores.

When a high volume of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted. Candidates will be invited to interview based on their merit order, with those achieving the highest scores being prioritised. Applicants who score below the adjusted pass mark but still pass will be placed on hold and may be invited to interview at a later date.

Stage 2 – Interview

If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours listed in the job advert.

Interviews will be via Microsoft Teams.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Important Dates

• Eligibility checks from 04/09 - 11/09. Please be aware we will be sending all candidates an e-mail to complete a eligibility form.
• Sift will be conducted from 14/09
• Interviews will be from 28/09

For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.

Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.