IT Service Desk Team Lead

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

Overview

Due to internal promotions, we’re looking for an IT Service Desk Team Lead to join our End-User Services department. This is a hands‑on leadership role where you’ll play a key part in shaping the day-to-day IT support experience for colleagues across Cambridge Consultants.

Cambridge Consultants is a global technology consultancy that helps organisations solve complex technical and business challenges. Our teams include engineers, scientists, designers, and specialists from a wide range of disciplines, all relying on effective, responsive IT services to do their best work. As Service Desk Team Lead, you’ll sit at the heart of that experience by managing a small and capable team, and helping to ensure our IT services are reliable, approachable, and continually improving.

This role offers the opportunity to combine people leadership, management, hands‑on technical skills, and service improvement within an environment where your judgement, ideas, and operational insight genuinely matter.

This opportunity will require you to work on‑site the majority of the time, with the option of occasional home working, where the role allows.

The role

You’ll take a leading role in shaping the day-to-day experience of IT support at Cambridge Consultants, guiding and developing a small, highly capable Service Desk team whilst remaining hands‑on and close to the work. By leading from the front, you’ll help ensure incidents and requests are handled efficiently, escalations are managed smoothly, and colleagues receive thoughtful, reliable support they can depend on.

The Service Desk team is made up of five colleagues based in Cambridge and supports people right across the organisation, including those working internationally or travelling overseas. As Team Lead, you’ll set clear direction, provide coaching and encouragement, and create an environment where the team can thrive, grow their skills, and take pride in the service they deliver as part of the wider IT Services organisation.

This role offers the chance to make a real impact. Working closely with colleagues across IT Services, you’ll help ensure the Service Desk is ready to support modern endpoint platforms, collaboration technologies, and evolving ways of working. Your insight from day‑to‑day service operations will help shape service improvements and ensure that user experience remains central to service delivery.

Responsibilities

Your responsibilities may vary and there’s opportunity for this role to evolve over time, but we’ve provided an example of the types of things you can expect:

• 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 more complex or technically nuanced issues.




• Own and manage Service Desk operations, ensuring incidents and requests are logged, prioritised, assigned, and resolved in line with agreed service levels.




• Monitor and manage Service Desk performance against agreed service levels and operational metrics, using insight from tickets and trends to drive service quality, prioritisation, and continuous improvement.




• Act as the primary escalation point for Service Desk issues, coordinating effectively with colleagues across IT Services to resolve more complex or high‑impact problems




• Monitor queue health, workload distribution, and emerging trends to ensure effective resourcing, timely response, and consistent quality of service.




• Ensure clear, timely, and appropriate communication is provided to users during incidents, service disruptions, and operational changes.




• Maintain high standards for Service Desk knowledge articles, ensuring documentation is accurate, accessible, and supports effective first‑contact resolution.




• Support service transition activities by ensuring the Service Desk is trained, informed, and prepared to support new or changed services, including company‑wide applications, end‑user devices, associated policies, and operational processes.




• Ensure Service Desk processes support accurate asset information and lifecycle tracking within FreshService.




• Promote consistent ways of working, documented procedures, and adherence to defined support workflows.




• Identify skills gaps and training needs within the Service Desk, coordinating learning, mentoring, and development opportunities.




• Engage with colleagues and stakeholders to gather feedback, understand user needs, and represent frontline operational insight.




• Contribute to service improvement initiatives that enhance user experience, improve operational processes, and increase service efficiency and reliability.

What you can bring

We’re looking for someone with the following skills and experience:

• Proven experience in a Service Desk or IT support leadership role, with responsibility for people management and operational delivery.


• Strong understanding of incident, request, and escalation management within an IT service environment.


• A people‑centred leadership style, with the ability to coach, develop, and motivate colleagues.


• Excellent communication skills, with confidence engaging users, stakeholders, and technical peers.


• A strong user‑focused mindset, with a commitment to delivering a reliable and empathetic support experience.


• The ability to balance hands‑on operational involvement with prioritisation, oversight, and continuous improvement of services and processes.

Some projects at Cambridge Consultants are subject to security restrictions. This role requires you to obtain a Security Check level security clearance (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/united-kingdom-security-vetting-applicant). You must be able to work in the UK without restrictions in accordance with UK National Law and be prepared to successfully undertake an appropriate level of UK National Security Vetting according to UK Government National Security Vetting criteria.

By submitting an application to Cambridge Consultants, you confirm that the information provided in this application, together with any supporting documentation, is true, complete, and accurate to the best of your knowledge and belief. You understand that any false statement, misleading information, or material omission may render you liable to disqualification from the recruitment process, withdrawal of any offer of employment, or dismissal without notice if discovered following appointment. You acknowledge that the organisation reserves the right to verify the information supplied.