This position is based in Johannesburg.
We’re accepting applications for the position of IT Service Manager. The IT Service Manager is a key leadership role responsible for the end-to-end planning, delivery, performance, and continual improvement of IT services across the organisation. This position ensures that IT services are reliable, efficient, secure, and fully aligned with business objectives and user needs. Working closely with technical teams, business stakeholders, and external vendors, the IT Service Manager drives operational excellence, manages service levels (SLAs/OLAs), oversees incident/problem/change processes, and fosters a customer-centric IT culture. The role has a strong emphasis on service strategy, operations, and continuous improvement. This is a strategic and hands-on position that bridges technology and business, ensuring high availability, minimal downtime, and optimal value from IT investments.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Developing, implementing and maintaining Information Technology service strategies, policies and processes
- Designing and improving services to meet evolving business requirements while aligning with organisational goals
- Overseeing the full lifecycle of incident, problem, request and change management
- Ensuring timely resolution of issues, root cause analysis and prevention of recurring problems to minimise business impact
- Defining, negotiating, monitoring and reporting on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs)
- Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as uptime, Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), customer satisfaction (CSAT) and service availability
- Leading, mentoring and developing Information Technology support teams, including Service Desk, operations and technical specialists
- Managing staffing, training, performance and resource allocation to maintain a high-performing, customer-focused team
- Managing Information Technology service budgets, vendor contracts and procurement
- Optimising costs while ensuring quality service delivery and compliance with financial controls
- Building and maintaining strong relationships with internal stakeholders, business units and external service providers
- Acting as the primary point of escalation and ensuring vendors meet contractual obligations
- Identifying opportunities for process optimisation, automation and innovation
- Implementing improvements using ITIL practices to enhance efficiency, reduce costs and elevate service quality
- Ensuring all Information Technology services comply with relevant regulations, including the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) in South Africa, security standards and organisational policies
- Overseeing data protection, risk management and audit readiness
- Maintaining an up-to-date service catalogue, knowledge base and Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to support efficient operations
- Producing regular performance reports and dashboards for Senior Management
- Communicating effectively with all levels of the organisation on Information Technology service matters, changes and improvements
- Designing, implementing and continuously improving proactive monitoring and alerting systems across the entire Information Technology environment
- Deploying and managing enterprise monitoring tools for infrastructure, networks, servers, cloud services, applications and end-user experience
- Establishing real-time alerting mechanisms, including email, Short Message Service (SMS), Microsoft Teams, Slack and automated tickets, with appropriate thresholds and escalation paths
- Ensuring continuous monitoring coverage and rapid detection of performance degradation, outages and anomalies
- Integrating monitoring systems with the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) platform for automatic incident creation
- Conducting regular reviews of monitoring effectiveness, reducing false positives and driving proactive issue resolution
- Supporting capacity planning, trend analysis and performance reporting through monitoring data
- Owning and driving the organisation’s Information Technology security posture within the service management framework
- Leading vulnerability scanning, assessment, prioritisation and remediation activities
- Overseeing patch management processes for servers, endpoints, applications and network devices
- Ensuring timely mitigation of identified vulnerabilities and security risks
- Co-ordinating with cyber security teams on threat intelligence, penetration testing and security incident response
- Embedding security controls into service design, transition and operation through Security by Design principles
- Monitoring and reporting on security compliance, vulnerability trends and risk exposure to Senior Leadership
Minimum Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Information Systems, or a related field
- Minimum of 5 to 7 years of progressive experience in IT operations or service management, with at least 3 years in a leadership or managerial capacity
- Experience in a multi-vendor or enterprise environment is highly advantageous
- Familiarity with South African regulatory requirements (e.g., POPIA, cybersecurity frameworks) and experience working in dynamic industries such as finance, telecoms sector is a plus
- Proven ability to lead, motivate, and develop high performing teams
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Strong analytical mindset with the ability to diagnose complex issues and drive data-informed decisions
- Solid understanding of IT infrastructure, networks, cloud services, cybersecurity, and common ITSM tools (e.g., Jira, Remedy)
- Certifications such as ITIL 4 Foundation (or higher – e.g., ITIL 4 Managing Professional or Strategic Leader) or Project Management Professional (PMP), CAPM, or PRINCE2, as well as certifications in security or risk (e.g., CISSP, CISM, CRISC) and AWS