Overview
Role: IT Service Desk Lead (Freelance/Contract) - Maidenhead, United Kingdom
Exp: 5+ Years • Location: UK
Responsibilities
- Incident and Service Management: act as the escalation point for complex incidents and service requests, ensuring timely resolution in accordance with agreed SLAs.
- Perform root-cause analysis and drive resolution of recurring problems.
- Monitor service delivery performance, proactively identifying potential disruptions and coordinating corrective actions.
- Lead the configuration, optimisation, and rollout of ZohoDesk (or equivalent ITSM tool), including ticket workflows, SLAs, automations, queues, escalation rules, and dashboards.
- Define and implement standard service desk templates, including incident, service request, change, and problem templates, ensuring consistency across projects and support teams.
- Establish and enforce service desk best practices, documentation standards, and operating procedures to improve ticket quality, response times, and resolution efficiency.
- Act as the primary point of contact for service desk tooling, working closely with support teams and stakeholders to support adoption, continuous improvement, and reporting.
- Technical Support and Analysis: provide advanced technical support and guidance to internal users and external clients across systems, software applications, and infrastructure.
- Analyse data, identify trends, and recommend enhancements or solutions to improve overall service quality and reliability.
Relationship Management
- Collaborate closely with internal stakeholders, technical teams, third-party vendors, and external clients to manage service expectations.
- Support relationship management activities by clearly communicating technical solutions and service updates.
- Lead or participate in projects aimed at improving service delivery processes, documentation, and tools.
- Contribute to the knowledge base by developing and maintaining accurate, accessible documentation.
Process & Performance Management
- Ability to create, interpret, and present ITSM metrics, identifying root causes for performance issues and implementing improvements.
- Familiarity with ITSM tools (ServiceNow and/or Zohodesk), operational dashboards, and automation.
Compliance and Governance
- Ensure compliance with company standards, industry best practices, and applicable UK regulations (e.g., ISO 27001, GDPR, ITIL frameworks).
- Maintain accurate records of service-related activities for auditing purposes.
Training and Support
- Provide training and support to operational teams to ensure they optimize service delivery according to best practice guidance.
Essential Skills and Experience
- Proven experience as a Service Analyst, Senior Service Analyst, or equivalent role within an enterprise-level service management or IT support environment.
- Comprehensive understanding of ITIL practices, particularly Incident, Problem, Change, and Service Level Management.
- Demonstrable experience using ITSM tools (e.g., ServiceNow, Zohodesk, Jira Service Management, Freshdesk).
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, with experience conducting root-cause analyses and recommending effective solutions.
- Strong technical background with proficiency in common enterprise technologies (Microsoft 365, Azure/AWS, network troubleshooting, databases, application support).
- Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills; adept at conveying complex information clearly to diverse audiences.
- Experience in developing, maintaining, and enhancing knowledge bases and service documentation.
Desirable Qualifications
- ITIL Foundation Certification (essential), ITIL Intermediate or Practitioner Certification (desirable).
- Certification or familiarity with Agile practices, Scrum methodologies, and project management (e.g., PRINCE2).
- Technical certifications (e.g., Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Cisco certifications).
Personal Attributes
- Proactive, self-motivated, and driven to continuously improve.
- Collaborative, team-oriented, with strong stakeholder management capabilities.
- Ability to prioritise workload effectively under pressure and manage conflicting priorities.
- Flexible and adaptable to changing business demands and priorities.