Operational Readiness Lead - DV Cleared

The IT Service Operational Readiness Lead is responsible for ensuring that new or changed IT services are fully prepared for operational support before deployment into live environments. This role acts as the bridge between project delivery teams, service management, operations, and support functions to ensure all operational, technical, and business readiness activities are completed, documented, and approved.

The role supports successful service transitions by coordinating operational acceptance, support models, knowledge transfer, training, documentation, risk management, and service handover activities.

Key Responsibilities

Service Transition & Operational Readiness

• Lead Operational Readiness Reviews (ORR) for new and updated services.
• Develop and maintain operational readiness frameworks, processes, and governance.
• Ensure all operational acceptance criteria are met before service go-live.
• Coordinate service transition activities across project and operational teams.
• Act as the operational readiness authority for project deployments.

Service Acceptance & Governance

• Define and maintain Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT) requirements.
• Facilitate readiness assessments and go-live reviews.
• Identify and manage operational risks, issues, and dependencies.
• Ensure service support requirements are documented and approved.

Knowledge & Documentation Management

• Ensure support documentation, work instructions, runbooks, and knowledge articles are created and maintained.
• Coordinate knowledge transfer sessions between delivery and support teams.
• Verify service desk and resolver groups have the information required to support the service.

Support Model & Resource Readiness

• Validate support structures, escalation paths, and service ownership.
• Ensure monitoring, alerting, backup, recovery, and support tooling are operational.
• Work with technical teams to confirm operational support capability and capacity.
• Assess resource and training requirements for support teams.

Stakeholder Management

• Partner with project managers, service owners, architects, engineers, and support teams.
• Provide readiness status reporting to senior leadership and governance boards.
• Communicate risks, mitigation plans, and deployment readiness recommendations.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify opportunities to improve service transition and operational readiness processes.
• Support ITIL best practices and organisational service management initiatives.
• Analyse post-implementation reviews and lessons learned to improve future readiness activities.

Essential

• 5 + year's experience in IT Service Management (ITSM) and Service Transition processes.
• Strong understanding of ITIL principles and frameworks.
• Experience managing operational readiness or service transition activities.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Experience working with infrastructure, cloud, application, and support teams.
• Strong risk management and problem-solving capabilities.
• Ability to coordinate multiple projects and priorities simultaneously.

This role requires active DV Clearance.

Reasonable Adjustments:

Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.

If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.