Company Description

The British Airways (BA) IT Operations team is part of BA Digital within the International Airlines Group (IAG), one of the world’s leading airline groups and owner of some of the biggest brands in the sky.

Our vision is to become the most trusted digital airline. We seek to delight our customers, enable our colleagues, accelerate business performance, increase shareholder value, and protect our business through the innovative and agile use of technology and data.

To harness our full potential across our customer, operational and colleague journeys, as well as our enabling domains, platforms and programmes, we are changing our ways of working and transitioning into a product-led organisation at scale.

Together, we are building a better BA.

Job Description

• Own and direct the end to end services defined within the service portfolio, specifically, provide the strategic leadership of end to end services working with the Critical Service Management team in the Service Integrator
• Act as the conscience of the CDIOs, providing business intelligence and insights into the IT Operations service outcomes from the Opcos (incl. Customer Satisfaction)
• End-to end operational delivery of Business Services and Products in the designated region (i.e. across all Service Delivery Towers)
• Proactive planning and forecasting of releases, changes and other potentially service impacting updates. Collaborative working with the Service Management Leads to provide any commercial or operational assistance to mitigate implementation risks
• Co-ordinate Service Management teams (Towers) to ensure the quality of inputs required for rapid resolution of Business Service/Product issues
• Escalate cross-supplier areas that require improvement, provide Business Service specific input and working with the Service Management Leads to review Provider proposed initiatives

Working in partnership with BA Digital and the business to:

• Ensure the flawless Service Delivery of Critical Business Services and Products for designated enterprise systems
• Manage the technical performance and quality of these enterprise systems, ensuring the realisation of business value from the IT services and products
• Drive engagement with the business, thus ensuring the delivery of maximum value from IT services and products
• Manage the day-to-day relationship with the Chief Digital Information Officers (CDIO’s) and their teams. Identification of trends and issues impacting excellent service delivery, working in partnership with the wider management teams to remediate issues
• Meet, continuously improve and exceed service level agreements (SLAs) and operational level agreements (OLAs), through internal and external services supply chain.
• Own and direct investments, in conjunction with the CDIO and Chief Technology Officer (CTO), to support the treatment or removal of operational IT risks e.g. obsolescence and service improvements, including supplier proposed initiatives.
• Oversee the operating companies tech investment portfolio, ensuring O&I impacts (cost, service) are accounted for in investments
• Maintain the holistic oversight of the obsolescence risk heatmap, managing key risks on behalf of Director
• Support the IT Operations Director to drive operational excellence, deputising as the proxy Director of IT Operations for the operating companies

This role may require travel and working from multiple sites/locations. Willing and able to travel to participate in meetings, workshops, and other related activities

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience
• ITIL or similar qualification in Service Management

Skills

• Strong leadership with a proven ability of influencing and persuading internally and externally. Leadership and motivation of virtual teams across different locations and cultures
• Effective senior stakeholder management, balancing and finding compromises between opposing views and opinions
• Problem solving & and understanding of the broader business context (business acumen)
• Systematic and rigorous planning of work and priorities
• Flexibility in a rapidly changing and developing environment, with the ability to work under pressure
• Innovation - transforming industry trends into practical, cost effective, secure, scalable and supportable solutions
• Fluent English

Experience

• Senior level IT leadership, gained in a complex global organisation
• Senior business partnering, working as a valued partner with senior stakeholders and strategic third parties across a diverse operation. In particular strong communicating & influencing skills (with an operational and / or service delivery bias)
• Demonstrable service management experience and delivery of results in an operational or service delivery role
• Exposure / experience of a shared services operating model / organisation
• Application of best practice principles (ITIL & COBIT) within a diverse and challenging technology environment
• Experience of operating across multiple countries and cultures is desirable, but not essential