Service Desk Manager

Activate Group Limited; Halifax; On-site; GBP 35,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading UK automotive service provider is seeking a Service Desk Manager to oversee IT service operations in Peterborough or Halifax. Responsible for high-quality service delivery and team leadership, you will drive efficiency and improvements across IT operations. Ideal candidates should have substantial service desk management experience, strong ITIL knowledge, and excellent communication skills. The role offers competitive salary benefits including a health cash plan and 33 days holiday.

Benefits

33 days holiday

Personal health cash plan

Enhanced maternity/paternity/adoption pay

Life assurance

Free breakfasts and fruit

Birthday surprise

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing an IT Service Desk or technical support function.
• Strong knowledge of ITSM frameworks (ITIL v4 Foundation or higher preferred).
• Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, and develop technical support teams.

Responsibilities

• Manage the day-to-day operation of the IT Service Desk.
• Act as the senior escalation point for major incidents.
• Drive proactive problem management to improve service reliability.

Skills

IT Service Desk management

ITIL knowledge

Incident management

Customer service orientation

Team leadership

Communication skills

Tools

HaloITSM

ServiceNow

Job description

Job title: Service Desk Manager

Department: IT

Location: Peterborough or Halifax

Hours: 37.5 hours per week

Salary: Competitive, plus bonus

We’re looking for a Service Desk Manager to be part of our success story.

Listed in the 2022 Sunday Times 100: Britain’s fastest-growing private companies. Great career development opportunities – grow with us.

About the role

Overall responsibility for managing the IT Service Desk and support operations across Activate Group, ensuring consistent, high-quality service delivery to both internal and external customers. This includes overseeing service requests, incidents, major incidents, and problem management, while driving efficiency and continuous improvement across IT operations. The role will lead a team of 1st to 3rd line support analysts based in Peterborough and Halifax, ensuring effective prioritisation, timely resolution, and excellent customer experience. In addition to team leadership, the Service Desk Manager will own ITSM processes, monitor service performance, and act as the escalation point for major issues, ensuring service reliability and alignment with business needs.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Support Analysts across 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line support functions.
• Manage the day-to-day operation of the IT Service Desk, ensuring service requests and incidents are logged, prioritised, and resolved within agreed SLAs.
• Act as the senior escalation point for major incidents, coordinating technical resources and business communications.
• Drive proactive problem management to reduce recurring issues and improve overall service reliability.
• Own and continuously improve ITSM processes including incident, request, problem, change, and major incident management.
• Monitor, report, and improve service desk KPIs such as response times, resolution rates, backlog management, and satisfaction.
• Ensure high-quality communication with internal and external customers, keeping users informed throughout the incident/request lifecycle.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, platform, and development teams to ensure effective handoffs and resolution of complex issues.
• Foster a culture of customer service excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement within the support team.
• Ensure compliance with IT governance, audit, and security standards.
• Contribute to wider IT strategy by identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, automation, and the overall end-user experience.

Skills and experience

• Proven experience managing an IT Service Desk or technical support function, ideally across multiple sites.
• Strong knowledge of ITSM frameworks (ITIL v4 Foundation or higher preferred).
• Hands-on experience with incident, problem, request, and major incident management.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, and develop technical support teams across 1st–3rd line.
• Experience handling major incidents and crisis communications with senior stakeholders.
• Strong customer service orientation, with excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Familiarity with ITSM tooling (e.g. HaloITSM, ServiceNow or similar).
• Good understanding of infrastructure, networking, and end-user technologies sufficient to manage escalations.
• Ability to balance operational demands with process improvement and long-term service maturity.
• Ability to balance strategic leadership with occasional hands-on technical input.

Benefits

• 33 days holiday (including bank holidays)
• Personal health cash plan – claim back the cost of things like dentist and optical check ups
• Enhanced maternity / paternity / adoption / shared parental pay
• Life assurance: three times basic salary
• Free breakfasts and fruit
• Birthday surprise for everybody!

What you can expect from us

At Activate Group, looking after team members is a major priority. Whether you're at our smart Halifax or Peterborough offices, one of our AAR sites or working from home, we'll make sure you have all the support you need to succeed.

From benefits that put your health and wellbeing first, to impressive rewards for our employee of the month, and little perks like free fruit and cereal, we’ll go out of our way to show how much we appreciate you.

A bit about us

Named by the Sunday Times as one of the UK’s 100 fastest-growing private companies, we employ more than 700 team members nationwide.

We work with some of the UK's largest fleets and insurance companies, supporting drivers that have been involved in a road incident at our contact centres in Halifax and Peterborough.

We look after every step of the repair process, repairing vehicles at our own Activate Accident Repair body shops, and through a UK-wide network of independent repair partners.

Want to know what it’s like to work with us? Take a look at our purpose and values. They define who we are, and how we work with team members, customers and suppliers:

Purpose: Make someone's bad day better

Values:

• Make it happen – Be accountable. Take the initiative, work fast, and do a great job.
• Strive for better – Be bold. Challenge the norm – make small improvements often.
• Win together – Be a team-player. Win together, learn together, respect each other.