Incident Manager

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced, hands-on Incident Manager to join a technology and IT service management function within a complex enterprise environment.

This is an individual-contributor role suited to someone who can take ownership of major IT incidents, coordinate technical teams through service recovery, and ensure clear, timely communication with business stakeholders.

The successful candidate will bring a structured approach to incident management, strong stakeholder management skills, and the confidence to lead under pressure. Experience within financial services or another highly regulated, business-critical environment would be advantageous.

The role may also involve participation in a Change Air Traffic Control (ATC) rota, coordinating planned IT changes and helping maintain operational stability across technology services.

Key Responsibilities

Major Incident Management

• Lead the end-to-end management of major IT incidents, from initial triage and assessment through to service restoration and closure.

• Establish and facilitate incident bridges, bringing together relevant technical teams, service owners, vendors, and business stakeholders.

• Coordinate technical resolver groups to drive investigation, prioritise recovery actions, manage dependencies, and minimise business disruption.

• Maintain clear ownership of actions, decisions, escalations, risks, and recovery timelines throughout the incident lifecycle.

• Ensure incidents are escalated appropriately and managed in accordance with established incident management procedures.

• Confirm service restoration and coordinate post-incident reviews, ensuring lessons learned and follow-up actions are captured.

Incident Communications and Stakeholder Management

• Deliver clear, concise, and timely incident updates to technical teams, management, and affected business stakeholders.

• Communicate service impact, recovery progress, risks, and expected next steps throughout the incident lifecycle.

• Act as a central coordination point during major incidents, ensuring stakeholders remain aligned and informed.

• Maintain accurate incident records, timelines, decisions, and supporting documentation.

Change Air Traffic Control

• Participate in a rota supporting Change Air Traffic Control activities, where required.

• Coordinate planned technology changes across technical teams, service owners, and other relevant stakeholders.

• Identify potential scheduling conflicts, dependencies, operational risks, and impacts on business-critical services.

• Support the review of high-risk and emergency changes, helping ensure appropriate approvals, communications, and implementation planning.

• Promote adherence to change management policies and minimise the risk of change-related service disruption.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify recurring incidents, operational weaknesses, and opportunities to improve service resilience.

• Work with problem management and technical teams to support root-cause analysis and preventative actions.

• Contribute to improvements in incident management processes, communications, escalation procedures, and operational reporting.

• Support the consistent application of IT service management best practices.

Essential Experience and Skills

• Proven experience in a hands-on Incident Manager or Major Incident Manager role within an enterprise IT environment.

• Demonstrable experience leading major incident triage and facilitating live incident bridges.

• Experience coordinating multiple technical teams through investigation, escalation, and service recovery.

• Strong stakeholder communication skills, including the ability to deliver clear updates during high-pressure situations.

• Good understanding of IT infrastructure, applications, networks, cloud services, and interconnected technology environments.

• Working knowledge of ITIL incident management principles and established IT service management practices.

• Strong organisational skills, sound judgement, and the ability to prioritise competing demands during critical incidents.

• Experience maintaining incident timelines, action logs, escalation records, and post-incident documentation.

Desirable Experience

• Experience within financial services, banking, insurance, payments, or another regulated, business-critical environment.

• Exposure to Change Air Traffic Control, Change Advisory Boards (CAB), or enterprise change coordination.

• Experience working with ServiceNow or a comparable IT service management platform.

• Familiarity with problem management, root-cause analysis, service continuity, and operational resilience.

• ITIL certification or equivalent practical experience.

• Experience working with third-party technology providers and geographically distributed technical teams.

Personal Attributes

• Calm, decisive, and organised under pressure.

• Confident in leading incident calls and influencing technical teams without necessarily having direct line-management responsibility.

• Clear and professional communicator, capable of adapting messages for both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Proactive in driving actions, resolving blockers, and maintaining momentum towards service restoration.

• Collaborative, accountable, and focused on minimising business impact.

• Comfortable working flexibly, including participating in incident or change management rotas where required.

What Success Looks Like

The successful candidate will take ownership of major incidents, coordinate effective technical recovery, maintain stakeholder confidence through clear communications, and contribute to improved service stability. They will also support effective coordination of planned IT changes, helping reduce operational risk and protect business-critical services.