Service Design & Transition Lead

Role overview:

Service Design & Transition Lead
Waterloo - Hybrid Working
Fixed Term Contract - 12 Months
Permanent
Grade 4

At Currys we’re united by one passion: to help everyone enjoy amazing technology. As the UK’s best-known retailer of tech, we’re proud of the service our customers receive – and it’s all down to our team of 25,000 caring and committed colleagues. Working as one team, we learn and grow together, celebrating the big and small moments that make every day amazing.

As the Service Design and Transition Lead at Currys, you will be responsible for overseeing the design, transition, and operational readiness of IT services. Your role will involve governing the project lifecycle to ensure a successful handover from project delivery into Operations. You will foster collaboration across departments and advocate for continuous improvement and strategic alignment in service design, with a focus on areas such as cloud and automation.

You will play a key role in building towards AI-enabled IT Operations — identifying pragmatic opportunities to apply AI and automation, helping shape Currys’ approach as it matures, and championing a culture of intelligent, cost-effective service improvement. This is an opportunity to genuinely influence how AI is adopted within IT at Currys, at a point where that direction is still being defined.

Your main duties and responsibilities will include developing and implementing a Service Design and Transition Plan, managing relationships with stakeholders, overseeing operational and financial aspects, providing training and documentation, driving continuous process enhancements, fostering cross-functional collaboration, coordinating Early Life Support, and making key decisions on service design and transition strategies.

Role overview:

Service Design and Transition Planning: Develop and implement a Service Design and Transition Plan aligned with strategic objectives and Project Delivery Plans, ensuring service readiness and effective transition.
Service Design: Craft and confirm effective support models that precisely delineate and manage a multi-partner and platform technology ecosystem. Incorporate AI-augmented service patterns such as intelligent triage, self-service automation and virtual agent capabilities.
Observability: Ensure that solutions comply with observability standards, facilitating prompt and proactive/predictive reactions. Where tooling permits, leverage AI-driven monitoring and anomaly detection to enhance predictive capabilities and reduce mean time to detect and resolve.
Operational and Financial Oversight: Oversee the integration of Non-Functional Requirements, manage the transition of Run Costs to budget holders, and ensure operational sustainability beyond project lifecycles.
Service Assurance and Continuous Improvement: Advocate the Service Assurance framework, and represent service readiness in the Service Assurance Board. Proactively identify opportunities where AI tooling could automate repetitive processes or surface insights from service data.
AI Championing and Innovation: Act as a visible champion for the pragmatic and responsible use of AI within IT Operations and Support. Collaborate with IT leadership to develop an AI adoption roadmap that is commercially grounded and contributing to a capability that Currys is actively building, rather than inheriting.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Foster a collaborative culture, drive early engagement and integrate Service Management principles into solution architectures for operational excellence. Proactively engage engineering, data and product teams to ensure AI considerations are surfaced during solution design and that service models are ready to support AI-driven patterns.
Early Life Support and Service Acceptance: Coordinate Early Life Support, ensuring critical go-live support, and manage the agreement and communication of Service Acceptance Criteria.
Decision-Making and Escalation: Make key decisions on service design and transition strategies, accountable for addressing misalignments with the Service Assurance framework.

Required Skills & Experience:

IT Service Management Expertise: Strong background in IT Service Management, including comprehensive knowledge of various service management processes and operational modalities.
Agile and DevOps Proficiency: Demonstrated experience in leading service design and transition within Agile frameworks and integrating services into a DevOps operating model, highlighting adaptability and innovation.
Project and Portfolio Management: Ability to oversee a diverse project portfolio, understanding different project delivery methodologies (Agile and Waterfall) and to act as an enabler for the smooth delivery and transition of Services into Live Service.
Technical Acumen: Well-versed in key technologies, particularly cloud services and DevOps practices, along with proficiency in essential tools like ServiceNow, SharePoint, Excel, and Jira. Growing awareness of AI and automation tooling — including AIOps, ITSM-integrated AI and conversational platforms.
Problem-Solving and Adaptability: Innovative problem-solver with a pragmatic approach, capable of navigating complex challenges and influencing outcomes. Applies an AI-aware lens when approaching service challenges — exploring where intelligent automation or data-driven tooling could deliver a more scalable or cost-effective solution.

Why join us:

Join our team and we'll be with you every step of the way, helping you develop the career you want with new opportunities, on-going training and skills for life.

Not only can you shape your own future, but you can help take charge of ours too. As the biggest recycler and repairer of tech in the UK, we’re in a position to make a real impact on people and the planet.

Every voice has a space at our table and we're committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. We want to make sure you have a fair opportunity to show us your talents during our application process, so if you need any additional assistance with your application please email [email protected] and we'll do our best to help.