Manager (Team lead of Maintenance team)

We're looking for an experienced Manager to lead a dedicated cross-functional team that keeps mission-critical systems running for a global higher-education client, spanning multiple university brands across the USA, Canada, the UK, and the EU.

You'll run a lean, multi-disciplinary team in close partnership with the Technical Lead — keeping live services available, secure, and compliant while delivering enhancements and change projects on top.

The role sits at the intersection of operations, delivery, and client relationship: support tickets get resolved, security patches land on time, sprint commitments are met, and the client always knows where things stand.

When something urgent comes in from senior management, you're the one who keeps calm and gets it sorted. The ideal candidate brings strong stakeholder communication, issue resolution, and team coordination skills — plus a genuine interest in using AI tools and automation to make everything run faster and smarter.

Responsibilities

Team leadership & operations

• Lead and develop a cross-functional team;

• Plan sprints, estimate tasks, balance workload across maintenance, support, security, and change projects — ensuring the team's capacity is allocated effectively against a fixed service surface;

• Drive knowledge sharing, documentation, and onboarding to reduce single-person dependencies and build team resilience;

• Work in close partnership with the Technical Lead on security maintenance, incident resolution, and technical decision-making;

• Coordinate cross-brand release planning.

Stakeholder management & communication

• Act as the primary point of contact for the client and internal stakeholders, fostering strong relationships and clear communication;

• Handle escalations and urgent requests from C-level management with appropriate prioritisation and responsiveness;

• Communicate progress on monthly/quarterly initiatives, service reviews, and delivery metrics to both internal teams and external stakeholders;

• Coordinate with project teams delivering system enhancements to ensure alignment on scope, handoffs, and dependencies.

Service delivery & continuous improvement

• Oversee end-to-end post-implementation support and ongoing maintenance for supported systems

• Manage first-line support operations — service desk triage, access management, provisioning/deprovisioning, and escalation;

• Elicit, analyse, and refine business and technical requirements to support successful delivery of change requests and enhancements;

• Develop project plans, release roadmaps, and prioritise tasks based on business goals and service impact;

• Resolve customer queries and service issues by identifying root causes, selecting appropriate solutions, and following through to ensure resolution;

• Monitor and report on key service metrics — response times, resolution times, backlog health, and SLA compliance — and take action when trends shift.

Security, compliance & risk awareness

• Ensure the team maintains the security posture of the estate — including vulnerability patching, infrastructure security, identity/access management, and accessibility compliance;

• Understand that security is embedded in maintenance (not a separate workstream) and advocate for the capacity needed to keep it current;

• Coordinate data-protection and compliance activities across student portals, payment gateways, and applicant-facing systems holding sensitive personal data.

Process optimisation & AI integration

• Drive process optimisation initiatives using AI tools to improve team productivity, automate routine operations, and enhance documentation quality.

• Identify opportunities to streamline workflows, accelerate delivery cycles, and reduce operational inefficiencies through automation and AI solutions.

• Measure and report on the impact of process improvements to justify continued investment.