Application Services Manager

• Lead, develop and motivate two Application Services Scrum teams, creating clear accountability, priorities and a strong service culture.
• Own the operational performance and lifecycle of business-critical applications, ensuring availability, resilience, security, supportability and effective risk management.
• Oversee incident and problem management, driving root-cause resolution and continuous improvement to improve service reliability and customer outcomes.
• Partner with Architecture and IT Service teams to ensure new and changed applications are operationally ready, secure and effectively transitioned into live service.
• Lead the onboarding and ongoing management of vendor-hosted and third-party applications, including support models, SLAs, integrations and supplier performance.
• Own the application improvement and retirement roadmap, balancing day-to-day support with maintenance, upgrades, automation, technical debt reduction and legacy removal.
• Lead the safe decommissioning of legacy applications, ensuring dependencies, data, access, supplier arrangements and operational risks are appropriately managed.
• Use service data, business feedback and technical insight to prioritise demand, manage risk and continually improve application services.

Experience & Knowledge

• Proven experience leading Application Support, Application Operations, Enterprise Applications or similar technology teams.
• Strong experience owning business-critical applications throughout their lifecycle, from implementation and service transition through to enhancement and retirement.
• Experience working within Agile/Scrum environments, balancing incidents, maintenance, change and continuous improvement across competing priorities.
• Experience managing SaaS, hosted and third-party applications, including vendors, managed service providers, SLAs and supplier escalations.
• Strong understanding of enterprise application environments, including integrations, APIs, databases, authentication, monitoring and logging.
• Practical knowledge of IT service management, including incident, problem, change, release, continuity and service transition.
• Experience managing application risk, security, access controls, data protection, technical debt and business continuity, ideally within a regulated or financial services environment.
• Experience of application modernisation and decommissioning, with the ability to safely manage technical dependencies, data retention, access and supplier exit.
• Strong people leadership, stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to translate technical complexity into clear business priorities and outcomes.

Qualifications

• Relevant Agile, Scrum, IT service management, cloud, application or leadership qualifications would be advantageous.