Director - SN Platform Manager

The ServiceNow (SN) Platform Manager is accountable for the stability, compliance, and evolution of the ServiceNow platform within the ServiceNow Platform and Enterprise Tools Domain. The role ensures that the core ServiceNow platform is secure, resilient, compliant, and fit for purpose, supporting critical people processes across the organisation.

Working closely with the ServiceNow Platform and Enterprise Tools Domain Lead, Product Managers, Solution Architects, and ServiceNow stakeholders, the Platform Manager translates functional priorities into a platform roadmap covering configuration, releases, integrations, data, and technical risk. The role provides technical leadership across platform operations, vendor management, and platform governance, ensuring ServiceNow solutions are operated and enhanced in line with enterprise standards, regulatory requirements, and long-term architectural direction.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the end-to-end platform lifecycle for ServiceNow systems, including roadmap planning, configuration governance, release management, and platform evolution.
• Translate ServiceNow domain strategy into a platform roadmap, prioritising configuration changes, vendor releases, integrations, and technical improvements across ServiceNow.
• Provide direction to Product Owners and Analysts on what is delivered through platform configuration versus customisation, ensuring alignment with vendor best practice and enterprise architecture guidance.
• Act as the primary technical authority for ServiceNow platforms, ensuring solutions are compliant, secure, supportable, and aligned to enterprise and regulatory standards.
• Oversee vendor and system integrator relationships, managing delivery quality, roadmap alignment, release planning, and contractual obligations.
• Govern platform risk, controls, and compliance, embedding required controls (e.g. security, data protection, audit, payroll regulations) in partnership with Security, Risk, and Compliance SMEs.
• Coordinate platform changes across Product, Architecture, Data, Service Operations, and Change, ensuring operational readiness, documentation, and support models are in place prior to go-live.
• Act as an escalation point for platform stability, release issues, integration failures, and vendor-related risks, driving timely resolution and root cause remediation.
• Ensure effective integration management across ServiceNow, Identity, and downstream systems, working closely with Solution and Data Architects.
• Track and report platform performance KPIs (e.g. stability, release success, defect trends, audit findings, vendor performance), driving continuous improvement across the platform estate.
• Provide financial oversight of the domain, including product budgets and internal/external team resourcing costs, to inform strategic decision-making and ensure alignment with financial objectives.

Education & Professional Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Information Technology, or Engineering), or equivalent experience.
• Industry certifications highly desirable (e.g. Agile Methodologies, CPM).

Job Experience:

• Typically 18+ years' experience in ServiceNow technology, platform management, or enterprise systems.
• Experience with AI capabilities in the marketplace and ServiceNow offerings to support enterprise automation/AI strategy.
• Proven experience managing vendor-led platforms, including roadmap planning, configuration governance, and release management.
• Demonstrated experience overseeing complex ServiceNow systems in regulated environments, including audit, compliance, and data protection requirements.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional teams across Product, Architecture, Security, Data, Service Operations, and Change.
• Strong ability to explain technical and platform constraints to non-technical ServiceNow and business stakeholders.
• Experience managing platform dependencies, integrations, and third-party suppliers.
• Proven leadership experience managing small to medium technology teams or platform delivery functions.

Desirable Requirements:

• End-to-end ServiceNow platform architecture ownership - Broad understanding of the ServiceNow ecosystem, ensuring coherent architecture decisions across ITSM, ITOM, ITAM, CSM, HR, and custom apps. GxP and Sox experience with risk and compliance to support platform audits.
• Governance of platform architecture board and design standards - Proven ability to run an architecture board, define guardrails and patterns, and enforce reuse, data model consistency, and integration standards across engineering teams.
• Upgrade strategy and technical stewardship for a mature platform - Experience planning and executing annual upgrades, managing breaking changes, deprecated features, and regression risk while maintaining high availability and performance.
• Platform reliability, observability, and performance engineering - Skilled in monitoring and tuning the instance (logs, metrics, error budgets), proactively addressing stability issues, and driving remediation of architectural/technical debt.
• Licensing, entitlement, and cost optimisation for ServiceNow - Strong grasp of licensing models, roles, and entitlements, able to guide product teams on usage patterns that maximise value while controlling cost and compliance exposure.

Preferred Skills:

• Strong platform and commercial acumen, including vendor management and contract awareness.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, able to align ServiceNow, Finance, and Technology stakeholders.
• Strong analytical mindset, able to assess platform risks, dependencies, and trade-offs.
• Comfortable operating within structured governance, security, and regulatory environments.
• Ability to challenge requirements constructively to protect platform integrity and long-term viability.