Title:  IT Service Operations Lead

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation.

Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.

Canada Life UK is transforming to create a more customer-focused business by providing our customers with expertise on financial and tax planning, offering home finance and annuities propositions, and providing collective fund solutions to third party customers.

Job Purpose
 

The role-holder will oversee the efficient handling and resolution of incidents across the organisation, ensuring that service disruptions are minimalised, and business operations continue seamlessly. This role is not only responsible for leading the incident process, ensuring adherence to Service Level Agreements and managing key business and IT stakeholders, but also modernising our incident detection strategies and improvements via automation and monitoring. 

 
They will work cross-functionally with product owners, technical teams, business stakeholders and vendors to facilitate timely resolution and route cause analysis, along with problem and trend management helping set priorities and roadmaps in conjunction with IT Product teams. The role requires a strong focus on collaboration, process improvements and proactive incident and problem management to ensure the overall reliability and performance of IT services.

They will lead by example and promote best practises and procedures, as well as having technical knowledge across Windows operating system, CLOUD and On-Prem infrastructure, enterprise applications, and network components. 
 

Duties/Responsibilities 

• Provide leadership and experience to team handling 2nd line technical support issues, supporting them and assisting where necessary with technical knowledge and best practice
• Mentor and coach others 
• Support the Service Operations Manager and Engineer Managers providing leadership to project, product or platform team, stakeholders  
• Lead and co-ordinate the technical resolution of incidents impacting services, collaborating with the necessary technical teams to resolve within SLA   
• Support the continual improvement process by looking for opportunities to enhance services and reduce risk
• Responsible for providing expert technical knowledge to the incident management process (both production & non-production), ensuring assignment, remediation, escalation and ticket closure is completed in a prompt manner in-line with company SLA’s
• Provides technology skills, and act as conduit, to Product teams in order to achieve minimal disruption to production services and project delivery
• Provide technical support, collaborating with peers, 3rd parties and other technicians to resolve incidents
• Provide technology skills with regards to monitoring and automated solutions, pro-active remediation and best practises
• Advocate of ITIL framework, working closely with Central Service Management function and Product Teams 
• Pro-actively collaborate with CLUK IT Engineering teams and 3rd party suppliers, ensuring that they follow CLUK framework and methodologies for:

 
1.    Incident Management process
2.    Problem Management process
3.    Change/Release Management process
4.    Service review process
 

• Have in-depth knowledge of CLUK BAU operating environment, understanding toolsets, end user applications and infrastructure
• Provide management and Engineering teams with information with regards to known problems or re-occurring incidents
• Responsible for working with CLUK IT Engineering teams & Service Partners to ensure escalation and prioritisation of technical issues
• Manage day to day incidents, ensuring assignment, remediation, user feedback, escalation and ticket closure is completed in a prompt manner in-line with company SLA’s
• Able to present complex information to meet the audience needs
• Represent CLUK at Service Management meetings inc CAB, Daily Service Reviews, Problem Management etc
• Help maintain application inventory, CMDB, Configuration Items, knowledge base articles and other internal documentation required to support the CLUK IT environment
• Engage with end users in a professional, pro-active manner providing technical assistance and knowledge
• Focussed on continuous learning and developing skills.
• Keep up to speed with the latest trends and ITIL framework

Skills, Knowledge and Experience
 

• Exceptional understanding of ITIL framework and IT Service Management
• Extensive incident management experience 
• Extensive Problem management experience
• Must have experience in UK Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Pensions, Wealth Management.
• Excellent and Confident Communicator, capable of reporting up and down and dealing with challenging stakeholders
• Deep experience of reporting and tracking methodologies
• Experience of monitoring tools
• Strong demonstrable experience working within an agile and waterfall development environments
• Knowledge of, and demonstrable experience in working with, DevOps and Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery.
• Knowledge of Product Ownership frameworks
• Knowledge of MS Azure cloud platform
• Industry experience and a strong network of relationships to enable development of the service
• Pro-active and very end customer outcome focussed
• Able to influence technical decisions

Benefits of working at Canada Life

We believe in recognising and rewarding our people, so we offer a competitive salary and benefits package that’s regularly reviewed. As a Canada Life UK colleague, you’ll receive a competitive salary and comprehensive reward package including a generous pension and bonus scheme, along with, income protection, private medical insurance and life assurance.  We have a fantastic number of other benefits and support services as well as regular personal and professional development.

How we work at Canada Life

Our culture is unique and incredibly important to us.  We care about doing the right thing for our people, customers and community and helping others to build better futures.  Our blueprint behaviours shape and influence how we work, and are central to the relationships we have with others.  Every day we are encouraged to be more curious, own the outcome, face into things together and find a way forward. 

We want colleagues to have rewarding careers with us so we invest in the development of our people, technology and workplaces. That’s why we offer a range of training, flexible working and opportunities to grow and develop.

Diversity and inclusion

Building an inclusive workplace with a diverse workforce where everyone can feel they belong and achieve their potential regardless of gender, ethnicity or any other characteristic is a key commitment for us.  We are proud of the progress we’re making in DEI, and we continue for it to be a significant focus. 

“At Canada Life we believe in the power of great people from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives coming together to build better futures. Emerging talent is crucial to our growth and creating an environment that continues to inspire us all.”  Nick Harding, Chief People Officer, Canada Life UK

We appreciate that everyone has different work and life responsibilities. We’re happy to discuss flexible working arrangements, including part time, for any of our roles should this be a requirement for you.