Application Services Lead: Enterprise Apps & Lifecycle

The Openwork Partnership; Swindon; On-site; GBP 54,000 - 66,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-target bonus 10%

Pension matched up to 5%

Critical illness cover

Income protection

Death in service

25 days holiday + up to 10 bank hols

Private medical insurance

Dental insurance

Job summary

The Openwork Partnership is seeking an Application Services Manager to lead the operation, support, and lifecycle management of key business applications. You will champion ownership across the portfolio, drive service quality, and coordinate transitions from new to legacy systems while working with agile teams.

Reporting to the Head of Enterprise Technology, you will manage vendor relationships, implement improvements, and align applications with business outcomes.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading Application Support, Application Operations, Enterprise Applications or similar technology teams.
• Strong experience owning business-critical applications throughout their lifecycle.
• Experience working within Agile/Scrum environments, balancing incidents, maintenance and improvements.
• Experience managing SaaS, hosted and third-party applications, including vendors and SLAs.
• Strong understanding of enterprise application environments, including integrations, APIs, databases, authentication, monitoring and logging.
• Practical knowledge of IT service management (incident, problem, change, release, continuity, service transition).
• Experience managing application risk, security, access controls and data protection, ideally in regulated environments.
• Experience of application modernisation and decommissioning with safe handling of dependencies and data.
• Strong people leadership, stakeholder management and clear business-oriented communication.
• Relevant Agile, Scrum, IT service management, cloud or leadership qualifications are advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Own the operational performance and lifecycle of business-critical applications.
• Oversee incident and problem management to improve service reliability and outcomes.
• Partner with Architecture and IT Service teams to ensure operational readiness and secure transitions to live service.
• Lead onboarding and ongoing management of vendor-hosted and third-party applications with SLAs and supplier performance.
• Own the application improvement and retirement roadmap, balancing support with upgrades and debt reduction.
• Lead safe decommissioning of legacy applications with data retention and access considerations.
• Use service data and feedback to prioritise demand and continually improve application services.

Skills

Application leadership

Lifecycle ownership

Agile/Scrum

SaaS/Third-party apps

Enterprise app environments

IT service management

Risk & security management

Modernisation & decommissioning

Stakeholder communication

Leadership qualifications

Job description

The Openwork Partnership is seeking an Application Services Manager to lead the operation, support, and lifecycle management of key business applications. You will champion ownership across the portfolio, drive service quality, and coordinate transitions from new to legacy systems while working with agile teams.

Reporting to the Head of Enterprise Technology, you will manage vendor relationships, implement improvements, and align applications with business outcomes.