Service Transition ManagerHead Office

We are seeking a highly organised and collaborative Service Lifecycle Manager with a primary focus on Service Transition and Introduction.

In this role, you will be responsible for ensuring that new and changed services are successfully planned, tested, and transitioned into the live environment with minimal disruption to operations. You will work across delivery, project, and operational teams to ensure services are production-ready, supportable, and aligned with business expectations from day one.

This is a pivotal role that bridges project delivery and operational readiness, ensuring that services deliver measurable value throughout their lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

• Service Strategy & Design

• Contribute to and evolve service strategies in alignment with business goals and customer expectations

• Contribute to the design of services to ensure they are operationally viable and cost-effective

• Ensure services comply with architectural, risk, and compliance frameworks

• Service Transition & Introduction

• Own and manage the transition of services from project or development phases into live operational use

• Ensure all new and modified services meet operational acceptance criteria and are fully supportable

• Lead the creation and execution of service transition plans, including resourcing, risk assessments, communications, and readiness activities

• Manage early-life support (ELS) periods, ensuring handover to operations and support teams is smooth and well-coordinated

• Act as the single point of contact for transition-related issues and escalations

• Service Retirement & Rationalisation

• Assess services for redundancy, underperformance, or misalignment with strategy

• Lead the retirement or consolidation of services in a structured and risk-managed manner

• Operational Service Readiness

• Ensure support teams are trained, equipped, and resourced to manage new services effectively (effective knowledge transfer)

• Validate that all documentation (e.g., service catalogue, runbooks, SLAs, support models) is complete and accurate

• Work with change, release, and deployment management teams to coordinate go-live activities

• Risk and Issue Management

• Identify, assess, and mitigate risks associated with service transitions

• Manage issues and escalate where necessary to ensure timely resolution

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate closely with project managers, product owners, technical leads, and business stakeholders to ensure shared understanding of service requirements and readiness criteria

• Facilitate go/no-go decisions for service launches based on operational readiness assessments

• Provide regular updates and progress reporting to senior stakeholders throughout the transition lifecycle

• Communicate transition plans, status updates, and post-implementation reviews

• Continual Improvement

• Capture lessons learned from each transition and feed them into improved transition frameworks and processes

• Refine service introduction templates, checklists, and governance practices to drive efficiency and consistency

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Strong background in IT Service Management (ITSM), especially in service transition, introduction, or operations readiness

• Proven experience leading or managing the successful rollout of new or changed IT/business services

• Deep understanding of ITIL (v4 preferred), particularly Service Transition and Service Design principles

• Experience working with cross-functional teams across project delivery, infrastructure, support and service operations

• Excellent communication, coordination, and stakeholder management skills

Desirable Qualifications

• ITIL certification (Intermediate or higher in Service Transition or equivalent)

• Familiarity with change, release, and deployment management processes

• Experience with service management tools (e.g., ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Jira Service Management)

• Experience in cloud-based or hybrid environments

• Background in Agile or DevOps practices

Key Attributes

• Methodical and detail-oriented with strong planning skills

• Ability to influence and coordinate across multiple teams

• Resilient under pressure and comfortable managing competing priorities

• Strong focus on service quality, risk mitigation, and customer outcomes

Everything you'll love

To ensure we balance moments where we know we need to collaborate together and the need for flexibility, Asda has a hybrid way of working with a minimum 3 days a week in one of our Home Offices. Over and above this, each area of Asda may have additional requirements which may require spending more days in the office, visiting suppliers, stores or depots.

You will also get an excellent benefits package including:

• Discretionary company bonus
• Company pension up to 7% matched
• Company Car allowance of £5,700
• 15% colleague discount in store and online
• Free access to wellbeing services such as Wagestream, 24/7 virtual GP, counselling, health and dental cash plans and a 24/7 employee assistance helpline, alongside discounts across a range of services and activities, from airport parking, enhanced to theme parks and cinemas.
• Asda Allies Inclusion Networks – helping colleagues to make sure everybody is included and that our differences are recognised and celebrated
• Excellent parental leave policies, including maternity & adoption leave, paternity leave, shared parental leave, neonatal care leave, and support for those doing fertility treatments.

We want all colleagues to be able to bring their best and true selves to work, every day. Simply put, we want our colleagues to be Proud to be Asda and proud to be themselves"