Service Desk Manager

Service Desk Manager London (hybrid) 6 month contract (Outside IR35) £500 - £600 p/d A well-established and growing organisation is seeking an experienced Service Desk Manager to lead and evolve its IT support function within a complex, multi-site environment. Supporting a diverse user base across office, remote and site locations, you'll play a pivotal role in delivering a high-quality, customer-focused IT service, ensuring stability, performance and continuous improvement across the service desk and field support teams. Key Responsibilities: • Lead and manage the Service Desk and Field Support teams, driving performance, development and a customer-first culture • Act as the senior escalation point for major incidents and complex technical issues • Own end-to-end incident, request, problem and change management aligned to ITIL best practices • Oversee ticket queues, workload distribution, SLA/OLA adherence and ticket quantity • Produce regular service reporting (SLAs, backlog, ticket ageing, trends, first-time fix rates) and provide insights to leadership • Drive continuous improvement through root cause analysis, gap analysis and service optimisation initiatives • Coordinate service desk involvement in projects, rollouts, migrations and onboarding/offboarding activities • Work closely with infrastructure, security, applications teams and third-party suppliers to ensure effective service delivery • Maintain and improve knowledge management, documentation and standard operating procedures • Ensure alignment with governance frameworks (ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus) and internal controls • Manage supplier relationships and support vendor performance and accountably Requirements: • Proven experience managing a Service Desk in a multi-site, complex environment • Strong leadership experience managing and developing support teams • Excellent stakeholder engagement and customer service skills • Strong experience with ITSM tools (ServiceNow essential) • Solid understanding of ITIL practices (Incident, Problem, Change Management) • Experience with Microsoft environments (M365, Azure AD / Entra ID, Intune, Windows 10/11, Teams, SharePoint) • Knowledge of IT asset & service management (ITAM/SAM) principles • Experience managing third-party suppliers and service performance • Strong reporting, analytical and service improvement capability • Ability to operate in a fast-paced, high-demand environment