Service Delivery Manager

Role Summary / Job Purpose

The SDM role is primarily customer-facing and strategically oriented, ensuring that service delivery processes not only meet SLAs but also advance client business objectives and long-term goals. Operating with a high degree of autonomy, the SDM manages complex service environments and converts operational insights into clear, actionable recommendations for senior leadership. The position is accountable for maintaining service delivery and support processes that consistently deliver exceptional client service in a cost-efficient manner. Beyond operational excellence, the SDM ensures all activities are aligned with business impact metrics and client success

Key Responsibilities

Client & Stakeholder Management

The SDM acts as the primary liaison for clients and internal stakeholders, ensuring service expectations are clearly defined, communicated, and consistently met. Building and sustaining long-term client relationships through proactive engagement is central to this function. This includes explicitly connecting service performance to client business priorities and outcomes.

Service Delivery & Operational Oversight

This area involves leading end-to-end service execution in alignment with contractual SLAs and KPIs and business impact metrics such as customer retention, revenue assurance, and operational continuity. The SDM conducts regular service reviews, balances service quality with cost-efficiency, and ensures operational excellence across delivery streams.

Dispatch Services Management

The SDM oversees dispatch operations across APAC, EMEA, and AMER regions. Responsibilities include timely assignment of field engineers and service personnel, optimizing dispatch workflows to improve response times, reduce costs, and enhance service coverage. Workflows should be optimized not only for efficiency but also for minimizing business disruption and ensuring continuity.

Performance & Quality Assurance

The SDM monitors service metrics, manages escalations and critical incidents, and drives continuous improvement through structured resolution plans and root cause analyses, and incorporates proactive risk management and business continuity planning to safeguard client operations. This area ensures consistent service quality and client satisfaction.

Team Leadership & People Management

Providing strategic direction and daily leadership to delivery teams is essential. The SDM assigns responsibilities, manages workloads, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, excellence, and innovation to enhance business impact.

Staff Augmentation Lifecycle Management

This includes talent acquisition, onboarding, contracting, compliance, performance oversight, and offboarding. The SDM ensures rapid deployment, legal compliance, and retention of top talent through structured processes and proactive risk mitigation, while aligning workforce strategies with client business priorities and transformation initiatives.

Financial Management

The SDM is responsible for budgeting, cost control, and margin optimization. Collaboration with finance teams ensures accurate invoicing and financial compliance across engagements, with explicit focus on demonstrating ROI and linking cost optimization to business value.

Reporting & Executive Communication

Preparing and presenting service performance reports to senior leadership and clients is a key responsibility. The SDM ensures transparency in metrics and provides actionable insights for strategic decision-making, translating operational performance and emerging business opportunities into clear recommendations for senior leadership.

Workforce Planning & Vendor Governance

The SDM forecasts resource needs across geographies and time zones, defines sourcing strategies, and manages vendor performance through SLAs and dashboards. Strategic staffing decisions are made to optimize capacity, utilization, and cost, with emphasis on strategic staffing decisions that support business continuity and growth

Required Skills

Expertise in Service Delivery management frameworks (e.g., ITIL, PMP etc).

Strong Analytic, leadership, Presentation, conflict resolution, and decision-making abilities.

Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills.

Tools / Systems / Technical Knowledge

Proficiency in team management tools (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira, Microsoft Project).

Decision-Making Authority

• Authorized to make operational decisions to meet SLA and service Commitments
• Decides on incident prioritization, escalation, and resource allocation
• Approves temporary workarounds to ensure service continuity
• Takes risk-based decisions within contractual and policy boundaries
• Coordinates with stakeholders and seeks approvals only for exceptions
• Accountable for service outcomes and customer impact

Problem-Solving Complexity

• Handles multi-stakeholder, cross-functional issues with competing priorities
• Makes time-critical decisions under SLA, contractual, and financial constraints
• Focuses on root-cause analysis, not just symptom resolution
• Operates effectively with ambiguity and incomplete information
• Balances service quality, cost, and risk in every decision
• Manages escalations while maintaining customer confidence
• Drives preventive and continuous improvement actions

Stakeholder Management / Influence

• Major stakeholders for the role and if involves interactions with them
• Client facing role or non-client facing role
• Level of influence (peers, cross-functional, leadership)

Education & Certification Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent academic credentials.
• Demonstrated success in client engagement, strategic leadership, and complex problem-solving across diverse environments.
• Strong command of project management, financial oversight, and budget planning.
• Robust technical foundation in IT infrastructure and emerging technologies.
• Exceptional communication skills in English (CEFR Level C2), both written and verbal.
• Proficient in Microsoft Outlook and Office suite.
• Demonstrate flexibility to operate across global time zones and travel with minimal notice, as required by business needs.
• Proven ability to translate operational performance into business impact metrics and lead transformation initiatives that improve client outcomes

Experience Requirements

• 12-15 years of progressive experience in IT Service Delivery Management, with deep expertise in ITIL methodologies and service management frameworks Type of experience (domain, systems, tools, industry exposure)
• Strong command of project management, financial oversight, and budget planning.
• Robust technical foundation in IT infrastructure and emerging technologies