Application Services Lead: Lifecycle & Reliability

Openwork Limited; Swindon; On-site; GBP 36,000 - 60,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus scheme

Pension scheme

Critical illness cover

Income protection

Death in service

Holidays (25 days + bank holidays)

Private medical insurance

Dental insurance

Job summary

Openwork Limited is seeking an Application Services Manager to lead two Scrum teams responsible for operation, support, improvement and lifecycle management of core business applications. You will ensure reliability, security and alignment with business outcomes across the Openwork estate.

Reporting to the Head of Enterprise Technology, you will balance incident response with planned improvements and decommissioning, driving continual service improvement and strong vendor management.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading Application Support or Enterprise Applications teams.
• Experience owning lifecycle of business-critical applications.
• Experience in Agile/Scrum environments.
• Experience managing SaaS and third-party apps with SLAs.
• Strong understanding of enterprise app environments, APIs, databases, monitoring and logging.
• Knowledge of IT service management (incident, change, release, continuity).
• Experience managing application risk, security, data protection in regulated environments.
• Experience modernising and decommissioning applications.
• Strong leadership and stakeholder management skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead two Application Services Scrum teams with clear accountability and service culture.
• Own operational performance and lifecycle of business-critical applications.
• Oversee incident and problem management with root-cause analysis.
• Collaborate with Architecture and IT Service teams to ensure operational readiness.
• Lead onboarding and management of vendor-hosted and third-party apps, including SLAs.
• Own application improvement and retirement roadmap balancing support and upgrades.
• Oversee safe decommissioning of legacy applications managing dependencies and data.
• Use service data and feedback to prioritize demand and reduce risk.

Skills

Agile & Scrum

IT Service Management

Cloud applications

Leadership

Vendor management

Education

Agile, Scrum, IT service management, cloud, leadership qualifications

Job description

Openwork Limited is seeking an Application Services Manager to lead two Scrum teams responsible for operation, support, improvement and lifecycle management of core business applications. You will ensure reliability, security and alignment with business outcomes across the Openwork estate.

Reporting to the Head of Enterprise Technology, you will balance incident response with planned improvements and decommissioning, driving continual service improvement and strong vendor management.