Director - SN & Ent. Tools Operations Excellence

The ServiceNow Platform & Enterprise Tools Service Operations Lead is responsible for ensuring the stable, compliant, and reliable operation of core systems and platforms within the ServiceNow Platform & Enterprise Tools domain. The role oversees day-to-day platform operations and ensures that processes are followed, risks are managed, and changes are delivered safely. It maintains the operational performance of multiple platforms (e.g. ServiceNow), ensuring they meet agreed service levels and adhere to security and compliance expectations.

Operating at a senior level, the role provides leadership across operational teams, acts as the primary escalation point for platform issues, and partners with Product/Platform Owners, architects, engineering teams, and IT service functions to maintain platform stability and drive continuous improvement.

Job Purpose:

The ServiceNow Platform & Enterprise Tools Service Operations Lead is responsible for ensuring the stable, compliant, and reliable operation of core systems and platforms within the ServiceNow Platform & Enterprise Tools domain. The role oversees day-to-day platform operations and ensures that processes are followed, risks are managed, and changes are delivered safely. It maintains the operational performance of multiple platforms (e.g. ServiceNow), ensuring they meet agreed service levels and adhere to security and compliance expectations.

Operating at a senior level, the role provides leadership across operational teams, acts as the primary escalation point for platform issues, and partners with Product/Platform Owners, architects, engineering teams, and IT service functions to maintain platform stability and drive continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide operational leadership across core platforms, ensuring system stability, availability, and adherence to service levels, acting as the primary internal escalation point for product and domain teams on service performance and major incidents.
• Govern incident, problem, change, configuration, and release processes for domain platforms, ensuring operational compliance with ITSM policies and control frameworks, and defining measurable outcomes for problem management (e.g., RCA closure time, recurrence prevention, defect trend reduction).
• Define and maintain service readiness and runbook quality standards (e.g. ServiceNow Knowledge), ensuring escalation paths, support tasks, data handling, continuity steps, and deployment impacts are captured and validated before go-live.
• Create and oversee service plans for new and enhanced products, coordinating with Product Owners, third-party partners, and platform/service teams to define SLAs, performance expectations, and support handover criteria.
• Monitor platform performance, proactively identifying risks, trends, and recurring issues, and implement improvement actions to strengthen stability and user experience.
• Coordinate with Platform Owners, engineering squads, solution architects, and service teams to ensure changes, integrations, upgrades, and releases are deployed safely and meet operational readiness standards.
• Lead operational readiness assessments, ensuring documentation, support models, monitoring coverage, and non-functional controls are in place prior to deployment.
• Own operational dashboards, KPIs, and reporting for the platforms, ensuring performance, risks, and issues are communicated to senior stakeholders.
• Oversee root cause analysis for major incidents, ensuring sustainable fixes, clear remediation actions, and preventative measures are identified and delivered.
• Maintain and continuously improve operational documentation, including runbooks, support procedures, configuration inventories, and architectural operational views.
• Manage relationships with third-party vendors and managed service providers to ensure high-quality operational support and fulfilment of contractual obligations.

Education & Professional Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Information Technology, or Systems Engineering), or equivalent experience.
• Industry certifications highly desirable (e.g., ITIL, Agile/Scrum, Service Management, DevOps Foundations)

Job Experience:

• Typically 18+ years of experience in platform operations (e.g. ServiceNow), system administration, service management, or technical delivery roles within complex environments.
• Significant experience overseeing operational performance for multiple platforms or systems within a complex environment.
• Demonstrated ability to manage ITSM processes, including incident, problem, change, release, and configuration management.
• Proven ability to diagnose operational issues, lead root cause analysis, and drive sustainable improvements.
• Experience coordinating with engineering, architecture, and product teams to ensure operational readiness and safe deployment of changes.
• Experience producing and maintaining operational artefacts such as runbooks, support procedures, and readiness assessments.
• Familiarity with operational KPIs, risk indicators, monitoring dashboards, and performance reporting.
• Experience operating in Agile and/or DevOps environments supporting continuous delivery and operational stability.

Desirable Requirements:

• Operational oversight and ITSM governance for ServiceNow platforms - Provides senior oversight of day-to-day ServiceNow Platform & Enterprise Tools operations run by third parties, ensuring processes are followed, risks are managed, and changes are delivered safely so platforms remain stable, compliant, reliable, and within agreed service levels and security expectations.
• Service readiness, runbook quality, and major incident management - Skilled at defining and enforcing standards for knowledge, runbooks, escalation paths, and support tasks, leading major incident response and ensuring safe deployments and service continuity.
• Performance monitoring, RCA, and continuous improvement - Strong capability in owning operational dashboards, KPIs, and reporting, diagnosing recurring issues, leading root cause analysis, and driving sustainable remediation and trend reduction.
• Cross-functional coordination for operational readiness and change - Proven ability to work with Platform Owners, architects, engineering squads, service teams, and third-party providers to ensure integrations, upgrades, and releases meet operational readiness standards.
• Vendor and MSP relationship management for high-quality operations - Experienced in managing third-party vendors and managed service providers, ensuring contractual obligations, support quality, and operational performance expectations are met.

Preferred Skills:

• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, especially in complex operational scenarios.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to provide clarity during incidents and complex change cycles.
• Strong understanding of security, compliance, and operational risk controls.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams, influence without direct authority, and promote operational discipline.
• Effective organisational skills, able to balance multiple priorities and manage time-sensitive escalations.