Principal Service Manager

JOB DETAILS

JOB BAND: D
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent Full-time
DEPARTMENT: BBC Product Group
LOCATION: Salford or Newcastle - Hybrid
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: Up to 61600 depending on relevant skills knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Were happy to discuss flexible working. If youd like to please indicate your preference in the application though theres no obligation to do so now. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The Principal Service Manager will act as the subject matter expert for service management within the BBCs Product Group Dev Operations function. This role exists to provide deep expertise hands-on ownership and continuous improvement of service management practices that underpin the availability resilience and quality of the BBCs digital products.

As an individual contributor the Principal Service Manager will ensure that core ITSM processes (incident problem change release service transition risk and compliance) are designed embedded and continuously optimised across product-led teams. They will serve as the escalation point for complex service issues provide operational governance and insight through analytics and reporting and drive automation and process improvements that enable engineering and product teams to deliver audience-facing services safely rapidly and at scale.

In doing so the Principal Service Manager helps ensure the BBCs digital platforms are resilient compliant and aligned with both technology strategy and the Product Development strategy supporting the BBCs ability to innovate while maintaining the trust of its audiences.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

As a Principal Service Manager youll join a team that values collaboration innovation and continuous improvement. Youll play a vital role in safeguarding the resilience and quality of BBC digital services used by millions every day while helping to shape how we deliver at scale in a product-led organisation. With access to unrivalled training exposure to cutting-edge technology and opportunities to influence transformation this role offers real impact and long-term professional growth.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT:
Subject Matter Expertise: Act as the SME for service management processes and practices providing deep technical and operational guidance across incident problem change release service transition risk and compliance.
Operational Excellence: Lead by example in the design execution and continuous improvement of service management processes ensuring they are robust scalable and embedded consistently across product teams.
Incident and Problem Management: Serve as the escalation point and hands-on lead for complex or major incidents driving resolution root cause analysis and follow-up improvements.
Service Transition and Onboarding: Own the operational readiness of new or changed services ensuring effective knowledge transfer documentation and smooth transition into live environments.
Governance and Reporting: Maintain service health metrics dashboards and risk registers; deliver insights to the Service Management Manager and stakeholders to inform decision-making.
Stakeholder Collaboration: Work directly with engineering product and editorial teams to ensure service management practices align with user needs and organisational priorities balancing governance with agility.
Continuous Improvement: Identify gaps inefficiencies and opportunities for automation within service management practices and lead targeted initiatives to improve quality and reliability.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA:
Deep ITSM Expertise: Advanced knowledge of ITIL and modern service management practices (incident problem change release service transition risk and compliance).
Hands-On Problem Solving: Demonstrated ability to manage and resolve complex incidents with strong diagnostic analytical and root cause investigation skills.
Operational Governance: Skilled in applying governance risk management and compliance frameworks without creating unnecessary friction for delivery teams.
Tooling and Analytics: Experience configuring and optimising service management platforms (e.g. ServiceNow PagerDuty Jira) and building data-driven insights for service reporting and improvement.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Ability to work closely with engineering product and business stakeholders translating technical issues into business impacts and ensuring shared accountability for service quality.
Continuous Improvement Mindset: Proven track record of driving operational excellence through automation process improvement and embedding a culture of learning and reliability.

DESIRED BUT NOT REQUIRED:
Experience in digital media or creative industries exposure to the unique demands of high-availability content-driven services where audience experience brand reputation and compliance are critical.
Track record of enabling digital transformation at scale supporting engineering and product teams in shifting from legacy platforms and processes to cloud-native automated and modern service delivery approaches.
Working within a product-led organisational model experience embedding service management practices directly into agile product teams balancing governance with autonomy to support rapid delivery and innovation.
Partnership with creative and editorial stakeholders ability to bridge technical service management with non-technical partners in a content or creative environment ensuring resilience and quality without constraining creativity.
Service reliability in fast-changing environments proven capability to design embed and optimise operational practices that support innovation cycles experimentation and rapid release in digital-first organisations.

If you can bring some of these skills and experience along with transferable strengths wed love to hear from you and encourage you to apply.

Before your start date you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges in line with our Contracts of Employment policy. This allows us to discuss any support you may need and assess any risks. Failure to disclose may result in the withdrawal of your offer