IT Service Desk Manager

Join us at EIT:

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Your Role:

At EIT we are seeking a proactive, process driven IT Service Desk Manager. The IT Service Desk Manager is responsible for leading and continually improving EIT Oxford’s IT Service Desk, ensuring a responsive, professional and high-quality support experience. As the primary entry point into IT, the Service Desk handles incidents, requests, support and guidance, with this role accountable for maintaining operational excellence and a white-glove user experience.

This operational role requires strong Service Desk leadership experience, practical knowledge of ITIL and IT Service Management, and the ability to develop people, processes and capabilities within a complex, fast-moving organisation. Working closely with the Head of IT Services and wider IT teams, the role will own day-to-day Service Desk performance and drive continual improvement across IT service delivery.

Your Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop the IT Service Desk team, promoting ownership, accountability, professionalism and excellent customer service.
• Own day-to-day Service Desk performance, including ticket prioritisation, workload management, escalation, communication and resolution.
• Maintain strong standards across SLA/OLA performance, first-contact resolution, ticket quality and effective hand-offs between teams.
• Act as the senior escalation point for complex or sensitive issues and identify recurring demand, bottlenecks and service improvement opportunities.
• Apply practical ITIL and Service Management principles, ensuring processes are proportionate, effective and consistently followed.
• Improve ITSM data quality, workflows, automation, self-service and knowledge management.
• Support Incident, Major Incident, Problem and Change Management activities, including communications and operational readiness.
• Define and review Service Desk KPIs, using performance data and customer feedback to drive continual improvement.
• Build strong relationships across EIT and ensure the Service Desk continues to meet evolving scientific, technical and operational needs.

What Success Looks Like:

• A capable, engaged and accountable Service Desk team with clear ownership and performance standards.
• Consistently high-quality support, strong customer satisfaction and a trusted reputation across EIT.
• Measurable and well-managed service performance, with reduced backlog, aged tickets, escalations and repeat incidents.
• Consistent application of ITIL and Service Management practices, supported by effective knowledge, automation and self-service.
• Strong participation in Incident, Problem and Change Management, with effective collaboration across IT and the wider Institute.
• A clear culture of continual improvement driven by service data and customer feedback.

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Extensive experience leading and developing an IT Service Desk or technical support function within a complex organisation.
• Proven success improving Service Desk performance, maturity, processes and customer experience.
• Strong practical knowledge of ITIL and IT Service Management, ideally supported by ITIL v4 certification.
• Experience across Incident, Request, Knowledge, Problem and Change Management.
• Strong understanding of SLAs, OLAs, KPIs, service reporting, escalation and continual improvement.
• Significant experience with ITSM platforms such as Jira Service Management or equivalent.
• Strong people leadership, coaching, analytical, communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Sound judgement and decision-making in complex, sensitive or high-pressure situations
• Advanced ITIL qualifications, Service Desk transformation experience, or experience in scientific, research or technology environments would be advantageous.

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive salary (based on experience) + travel allowance + bonus
• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

Working Together – What It Involves:

• You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary.
•  You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford (or be willing to relocate) and can commit to working 5 days per working week in the office.