Head Of It Service Operations

About Apex

The Apex Group is a global financial services provider with approximately 13,000 staff across more than 45-50 offices globally. We look to recruit bright, articulate, and numerate employees who are not afraid of a challenge, prepared to work hard and love what they do. Every employee plays a part in making Apex who we are today and the more we grow, the more important that becomes. Whatever your career path or specialism, Apex provides a global platform to allow you to thrive.

The Role

Reporting to the Global Head of Service Operations, the Head of IT Service Operations is accountable for the end-to-end governance, design, adoption and continual improvement of Service Operations processes and enabling capabilities across Apex globally (including acquisitions). This role owns the operating model for ITIL-aligned practices, ensures effective transition of change into BAU, drives service performance and value realisation, and governs the ServiceNow ITSM platform as the single global way of working. You will lead a multi-disciplinary team (Service Management, Service Transition, Change & Release, Asset & Configuration, and Value & Performance) and partner with the Global Service Desk, Technology Operations Centre, Engineering/DevOps, Security, PMO and Vendors to deliver reliable, compliant and customer-oriented services.

Primary responsibilities

1) End-to-end Service Operations Governance & Operating Model

• Own and govern the end-to-end Service Operations operating model, including process standards, controls and reporting across all ITIL-aligned practices (Incident, Major Incident, Request, Problem, Knowledge, Service Levels/Risk), ensuring global adoption across acquisitions.

• Define and maintain process governance forums (e.g., CAB, service review cadence, PIR governance) and ensure consistent decision-making, risk assessment, impact assessment, testing assurance and post-implementation learning.

• Ensure processes are audit-ready and compliant with relevant frameworks and regulatory expectations (e.g., ITIL/ISO20000/SOC-aligned controls), providing SME support to audit, risk and client due diligence requests.

2) Service Stability, Major Incident & Problem Management

• Take ownership of critical incidents, leading coordination across resolver groups and vendors, ensuring timely business communications and driving effective post-incident reviews and root cause analysis.

• Drive service stability through Problem Management, known error management, knowledge improvement, and proactive identification of systemic issues through trend analysis and KRIs.

3) Change & Release Management

• Own and embed Change and Release Management policies, processes and controls across technology and acquisitions via ServiceNow, ensuring that all changes and releases are authorised through CAB and meet defined readiness and quality criteria.

• Own and maintain a forward schedule of change (FSC), including forecasting and quarterly reviews, and ensure effective business-facing communication of planned changes that may impact client delivery.

• Ensure rigor and continuous improvement for change success rate, failed change analysis, PIR completion and release quality across Infrastructure, Applications and DevOps/CI-CD delivery models.

4) Service Transition, Integration & Operational Readiness

• Own the Service Transition process and embed operational readiness into the PMO/project lifecycle, acting as the gatekeeper for transition from project to operations for new or changing services.

• Define and deliver end-to-end support models and Service Acceptance Criteria (SAC) for new services, including lifecycle resourcing, training, tooling, documentation and sign-off from key stakeholders.

• Lead transition and integration activities for migrations and acquisitions into the Apex ecosystem and global ways of working, including knowledge transition and access alignment with the Global Service Desk and resolver groups.

5) Asset, Configuration & Software Asset Management (CMDB/SAM)

• Own and govern Asset and Configuration Management processes to ensure an up-to-date, verified CMDB of assets and configuration items (CIs), including lifecycle introduction, updates and retirement.

• Establish and manage CMDB data governance, quality controls, and dependency mapping practices to enable reliable downstream processes (e.g., change impact assessment, incident triage, risk and reporting) and integration with enterprise architecture tooling.

• Establish and operate a Software Asset Management (SAM) framework, ensuring licensing data and software installations are accurately captured, and providing commercial input to budgeting, cost transparency, demand management and contract negotiations with sourcing/legal.

• Coordinate with Service Transition, Change/Release, and Delivery teams to ensure asset/CI and license updates occur as part of deployment, release and acquisition activity (e.g., via Intune, SCCM, Discovery).

6) Value, Performance, Reporting & Continual Service Improvement

• Define, measure and report on SLAs, KPIs and KRIs across all Service Operations functions, producing insights for the Global Head of Service Operations, CTO and senior leadership.

• Centrally track and govern Continual Service Improvement (CSI/CSIP) initiatives, quantifying efficiency gains (time, cost, resource), and driving initiatives that remove manual effort and waste through automation and best practice.

• Define and maintain the Service Operations workforce capacity planning model, reviewing baselines to support new services, migrations and acquisitions and ensuring capability and coverage (including follow-the-sun/on-call).

7) ServiceNow ITSM Platform Ownership

• Own the ongoing development, administration and adoption of ServiceNow as the single ITSM platform, ensuring services, workflows and automation are designed for OOTB-first, with clear service definitions and metrics enabling performance reporting.

• Manage the enhancement demand pipeline, prioritisation and delivery (including bi-annual upgrades) using a blend of internal and partner resources, ensuring platform resilience, security and supportability.

• Establish and manage a ServiceNow Community of Practice with business and process SMEs to drive standardisation, adoption and continuous improvement.

8) Supplier, Vendor & Business Continuity

• Manage strategic third-party service providers and internal resolver groups, ensuring performance meets service schedules and SLA/KPI targets, and driving improvement plans where required.

• Maintain service delivery business continuity considerations for significant service events, partnering with appropriate Technology functions (including Office of the CIO) on BCP/DR, vendor management and procurement inputs.

• Support and drive the establishment of a 24x7x365 follow-the-sun/on-call operating model across Apex ecosystems and integrated acquisitions.

9) Leadership, Talent & Culture

• Lead, develop and retain a high-performing, customer-oriented team; set clear objectives, coach capability growth, and ensure sufficient capacity and skills to meet business outcomes.

• Drive a culture of ‘automation first’, standardisation and continual improvement across Service Operations, collaborating across Technology functions and the wider business.

Experience and Knowledge

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) in an IT-related discipline.

• Significant experience leading global, multi-process Service Operations / Service Management functions in a regulated environment.

• Strong knowledge of ITIL v3/v4 and service management best practices; ISO20000/SOC control awareness is desirable.

• Proven capability in Change & Release governance (including CAB), Service Transition and operational readiness practices.

• Demonstrable experience building and governing CMDB/ITAM and Software Asset Management disciplines and driving data quality.

• Strong performance management skills: defining SLAs/KPIs/KRIs, trend analysis, CSI governance and executive reporting.

• Hands-on experience with ServiceNow ITSM platform ownership (roadmap, demand, upgrades, automation) preferred.

• Excellent stakeholder management, communication and leadership skills across matrix organisations and vendors.

• Strong numerical, financial and commercial acumen (budgeting, cost transparency, capacity planning, contract considerations).

What you will get in return

• A high level of visibility within a large organization on an upwards trajectory.

• The opportunity to innovate, bring discipline to service operations and make a meaningful impact.

• A genuinely unique opportunity to be part of an expanding global business.

• Work for a fast developing and one of the world’s leading independent fund administrators.

• Opportunities for professional development.

• A positive and hospitable work environment.