IT Service Desk Lead — Hands-On & People-Focused

Cambridge Consultants; Cambridge; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

Cambridge Consultants is seeking an IT Service Desk Team Lead to guide a small Service Desk in Cambridge. The role combines people leadership with hands-on IT support and ongoing service improvements, ensuring reliable, approachable end-user services.

The position requires leading from the front, coaching the team, and maintaining high standards for support across global colleagues, with on-site work predominance and occasional home working where the role allows.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in a Service Desk or IT support leadership role.
• Strong incident, request, and escalation management.
• People-centered leadership style with coaching ability.
• Excellent communication with users, stakeholders, and technical peers.
• Ability to balance hands-on operational work with prioritisation and improvement.

Responsibilities

• Provide day-to-day leadership, line management, coaching, and development for Service Desk colleagues, fostering a supportive and high-performing team culture.
• Provide hands-on support alongside the Service Desk team, handling incidents and requests directly and acting as an escalation point for complex issues.
• Own and manage Service Desk operations, ensuring incidents and requests are logged, prioritised, and resolved within SLAs.
• Monitor and manage Service Desk performance against service levels and metrics, driving quality and improvements.
• Act as primary escalation point, coordinating with IT Services to resolve high-impact problems.
• Monitor queue health, workload distribution, and emerging trends to ensure effective resourcing.
• Ensure clear communication to users during incidents and operational changes.
• Maintain knowledge articles to support first-contact resolution.
• Support service transitions and asset lifecycle tracking within FreshService.
• Promote defined workflows and adherence to procedures.
• Identify training needs and mentor team members.
• Engage with stakeholders to gather feedback and insights.

Skills

Service Desk leadership

People management

Incident & escalation management

Communication

Customer-focused approach

Tools

FreshService

Job description

Cambridge Consultants is seeking an IT Service Desk Team Lead to guide a small Service Desk in Cambridge. The role combines people leadership with hands-on IT support and ongoing service improvements, ensuring reliable, approachable end-user services.

The position requires leading from the front, coaching the team, and maintaining high standards for support across global colleagues, with on-site work predominance and occasional home working where the role allows.