Would you love to work in a role where no two days or the same?

Do you thrive in constantly evolving situations and are great at taking control, assessing, and managing the situation?

If so, continue reading to find out more about this fantastic opportunity to join HMRC - one of the largest and most dynamic IT infrastructures in Europe, and we are now one of the most digitally advanced tax authorities in the world.

For those who are up to the challenge, we offer unique and unparalleled opportunities to work with some of the newest technologies and make a real, lasting difference.

At HMRC we are committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues; an inclusive and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society we serve.

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us and we offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career at HMRC accessible to you.

Diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to our success and we welcome applications from all people from all backgrounds with the experience and skills needed to perform this role.

See what it’s like to work at HMRC: find out more about us or ask our colleagues a question. Questions relating to an individual application must be emailed as detailed later in this advert.

The Team

Our role sits within Service Management & Operations (SM&O) which forms part of the Chief Digital & Information Group (CDIO).

SM&O are accountable for the end-to-end service of HMRC’s IT Systems & Services, and our focus is ensuring a consistent, excellent Customer Experience. SM&O work closely with the other platform groups and their partners to bring IT Systems and Services together.

The Major Incident Manager role is part of a wholly office-based team responsible for successful management of major incidents and escalations to conclusion across the IT estate 365 days a year, working collaboratively as required. The Major Incident Manager will drive the process to ensure that service is restored as quickly as possible, minimising the adverse impact on any business operations, and ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained.

You will be responsible for assessing situations, making appropriate interventions, managing resolution activities, and communicating this to both technical and non-technical stakeholders both within HMRC and to 3rd Parties. You will ensure this activity is managed effectively, managing the expectations for stakeholders, and acting as a point of contact for business areas, using language understood by those stakeholders. 

You will act as an office based senior leader and be accountable for leading and developing teams to effectively handle all incidents, ensuring maximum availability of HMRC IT services.

This post is not simply a technical role and the ability to provide visible leadership, take ownership of issues and proactively lead activities is critical to this role.

While you will be reacting to IT Incidents and taking ownership to manage them as required, you will flex outside this to support higher priorities as required.

We are looking for someone with experience of handling Major Incidents in a large multi-functional organisation, along with an understanding of both business and service impacts

A strong and effective leader, self-motivated, resilient and confident with working proactively and reactively, and comfortable delivering reports and briefings to senior leaders.

A strong communicator and able to effectively set your tone immediately for both business and technical audiences.

You will thrive in a team environment and quickly be able to build up strong working relationships with your team across both locations.

You will readily consider the ideas of others and can accept feedback on your work.

Responsibilities

• Facilitating and directing Major Incident resolution activity.
• Producing high quality communications for business and technical audiences within tight timescales.
• Challenging others to facilitate service restoration, while constantly reprioritising tasks and workload.
• Understand IT issues from a customer perspective, draw logical conclusions and make sensible suggestions whilst negotiating with suppliers.
• Taking part in post incident reviews and any residual recovery activity.
• Making critical decisions in relation to incidents/changes required out of hours.
• Working closely with partners to provide assurance of delivery to support Key Business Events.

The team currently operate an out of hours on-call rota which colleagues can join on a voluntary basis. Colleagues that join the voluntary rota will be reimbursed as per HMRC policy.

Essential criteria

You will have experience and understanding of:

• Positively influencing teams and skilled at building stakeholder relationships at all levels
• Working highly effectively in a demanding, constantly evolving environment under tight deadlines whilst championing the major incident process.
• Producing written communications of the highest quality for a range of audiences.
• Leading multiple teams and individuals to achieve the best possible result in the quickest timeframe.
• Strong and effective leadership.

 Desirable

• Existing knowledge of how a business service is supported by the IT.
• Service Management experience within a large organisation and meaningful experience in IT Operational Management.
• Proven dedication to IT Service Management standard methodologies, along with a track record of delivering continuous improvement in a customer centric environment.
• ITIL Foundation V3 or V4 and a fundamental understanding of the Major Incident Management function and how to apply it.
• ITIL Service Operations certification.

If you do not already hold it, you will be required to obtain Security Check (SC) Clearance, and this is a condition of remaining in post.