Service Governance, ITSM & Incident Lead - BPL

The Service Governance, ITSM & Incident Lead, BPL, is accountable for establishing and running the service-management control plane for BPL Technology Operations. The role will convert the Tech Ops operating model into practical Day 0 and Day 1+ ways of working across incident management, major incident command, problem management, change enablement, service catalogue, operational reporting and service readiness. The role exists to make new BPL technology services safe to launch, clear to operate and measurable once live, while avoiding the creation of a traditional “throw it over the wall” operations silo.

Working as part of the Technology Operations leadership capability, the role will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Customer Operations, CISO, Controls, GTSM / TC07, suppliers and the wider BPL transformation programme. Engineering remains accountable for production ownership under a “you build it, you run it” model; this role provides the governance, orchestration, standards, reporting and command structure that enables services to operate reliably at scale.

Organisational Context

BPL is building a lean, AI-first and service-led Technology Operations capability to support the Gaia programme, Q3 MVP launches and the progressive transition from current Barclays / TC07 operating arrangements to a standalone BPL service model. Tech Ops is intended to act as the horizontal operational backbone across internal teams, product value streams and provider-delivered services. Its focus is reliability, operability, resilience and control — not feature delivery.

The immediate priority is to make the Next Generation Gateway, Service Portal and associated launch capabilities safe to run at Day 0, with clear ownership, operational readiness gates, service hand-offs, incident command, tooling routes, controls evidence and reporting in place. Over time, the role will mature this into a repeatable, scalable service model across BPL services, integrating ITSM, AIOps, service reporting, SLOs, problem management, resilience and supplier operations into a single operating loop.

Scope

The role owns the design, implementation and ongoing operation of the core service-governance layer across Technology Operations. This includes ITSM processes, major incident command, service catalogue and ownership model, change enablement governance, operational readiness, service reporting, knowledge management, problem management and the service-management interfaces with Engineering, Customer Operations, suppliers, CISO, Controls and legacy / TC07 teams.

The role does not own product delivery, application development, engineering backlogs, vulnerability management, security policy, customer-service tooling or traditional eyes-on-glass monitoring. It is accountable for ensuring that the operational process, governance, escalation, evidence and reporting model is clear, adopted and effective across those delivery and support boundaries.

Key Accountabilities

• Establish and operate the BPL ITSM framework across incident, major incident, problem, change enablement, request, knowledge and service catalogue processes, ensuring the model is pragmatic, lean and appropriate for a fintech-scale organisation.

• Lead the major incident management capability, including incident command, war-room execution, escalation paths, communications routines, post-incident review and follow-through on systemic actions.

• Define the service catalogue, ownership model and service criticality approach, ensuring every launch service has clear service ownership, support boundaries, routing, on-call / escalation arrangements, runbooks and readiness evidence.

• Shape change enablement governance for BPL services, balancing control and speed through risk-based change thresholds, standard change patterns, release readiness, rollback criteria, audit evidence and alignment to Barclays control requirements where applicable.

• Drive problem management and continuous improvement, ensuring recurring incidents, service instability and launch learnings are converted into accountable actions, engineering backlogs, service improvements and measurable reduction in repeat failure demand.

• Own operational readiness criteria for Day 0 launches, including runbooks, service records, escalation contacts, tooling routes, monitoring / signal inputs, customer and supplier hand-offs, comms routes, controls evidence and go / no-go support.

• Develop service reporting and executive MI across incidents, service performance, SLAs / KPIs, SLOs, DORA indicators where relevant, change performance, control posture, resilience readiness, risk, decisions and operational confidence.

• Partner with SRE, Platform, Engineering and AIOps capabilities to improve alert quality, incident detection, event correlation, automation, toil reduction, operational telemetry and post-incident learning without diluting engineering accountability.

• Manage service-governance interfaces with suppliers and legacy service providers, ensuring clear escalation models, support obligations, operational hand-offs, evidence expectations and transition readiness gates as capabilities move towards the BPL target model.

• Build a practical service-management culture across BPL Technology Operations: clear ownership, blameless learning, data-led prioritisation, automation before headcount, strong control evidence and concise senior stakeholder communication.

Key Responsibilities

• Translate the Tech Ops operating model into executable service-management processes, role clarity, RACI / ownership maps, governance routines, workflow requirements and adoption artefacts.

• Stand up the Day 0 incident model for launch services, including named incident roles, severity definitions, escalation triggers, war-room protocols, communications templates, decision logs and post-incident review process.

• Work with Engineering and Platform teams to define minimum operational readiness requirements for each service, including observability, alerting, ownership, runbooks, rollback, support coverage and service-level expectations.

• Configure and continuously improve the service-management operating model across Jira Service Management or agreed tooling, ensuring workflow design supports routing, evidence capture, reporting and scale.

• Establish a lightweight service catalogue / CMDB-lite approach covering service owner, technical owner, criticality, dependencies, support model, supplier interfaces and operational evidence requirements.

• Lead operational engagement for launches and transitions, ensuring product, engineering, customer operations, support, supplier and control teams understand how services will run once live.

• Produce concise, senior-ready updates on launch readiness, service risk, incident trends, operational decisions, control posture and confidence to proceed.

Key Deliverables

• Day 0 service-governance model for launch services, including incident, problem, change, request, knowledge, service catalogue and reporting processes.

• Major incident management playbook, covering command model, severity levels, escalation, communications, decision logging, post-incident review and action tracking.

• Operational readiness checklist and evidence pack for each launch service, aligned to go / no-go decisions and Day 1+ stabilisation.

• Service catalogue / CMDB-lite baseline with clear ownership, criticality, dependencies, routing, on-call / escalation contacts and support boundaries.

• Service reporting pack covering incidents, MTTR, repeat incidents, change performance, service health, SLA / KPI performance, operational risks, controls evidence and decisions required.

• Day 1+ service maturity roadmap showing how the model evolves from people-led launch control to a standardised, tool-assisted and AI-enabled cross-provider service model.

Candidate Profile

The successful candidate will be an experienced service-management and technology-operations leader with a strong track record of standing up or materially improving ITSM, incident management and operational governance in complex, regulated technology environments. They will be comfortable operating hands-on in an immature / build environment while also creating the repeatable standards, artefacts and routines required for scale.

They must be able to lead calmly during major incidents, create clarity across ambiguous ownership boundaries, challenge over-heavy process where it slows delivery, and build credibility with engineering, product, customer operations, supplier and executive stakeholders. The role requires strong judgement: enough control to protect service reliability and regulatory confidence, without importing unnecessary legacy process overhead.

Essential Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Significant experience in IT service management, service operations or technology operations within a complex fintech, payments, payment acquiring company.

• Proven experience leading major incident management, incident command, crisis coordination, stakeholder communications and post-incident improvement in high-availability services.

• Strong practical knowledge of ITSM processes, including incident, problem, change, request, knowledge, service catalogue, SLA / KPI management and operational reporting.

• Experience designing or improving service-management tooling and workflows, ideally including Jira Service Management, ServiceNow or equivalent ITSM platforms.

• Ability to define operational readiness criteria, service runbooks, escalation models, support boundaries, service-level expectations and evidence packs for technology launches.

• Strong understanding of SRE, observability, alert hygiene, service ownership, SLOs, error budgets, postmortems and automation-led service improvement.

• Experience working across engineering, product, customer operations, suppliers, control teams and senior technology leadership to resolve ambiguity and drive adoption.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce clear executive-ready updates, incident communications, decision papers and service-readiness reporting.

• Experience in merchant acquiring, payments, gateway, servicing portal, digital channels or high-volume transaction-processing environments.

• Familiarity with operational resilience, business continuity, disaster recovery, technology controls, audit evidence and regulated outsourcing / supplier management expectations.

• Experience operating in a carve-out, new-entity build, platform migration, service transition or large-scale transformation environment.

• Understanding of AIOps, event correlation, service telemetry, automated evidence capture and AI-enabled service-management patterns.

• This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship and applicants must already hold the legal right to work in the UK.

• This role is intended for candidates who are already operating at Director level.

Success Measures

• Day 0 launch services have clear ownership, service records, operational readiness evidence, escalation paths, tooling routes, runbooks and go / no-go confidence.

• Major incidents are managed through a consistent command model with clear communications, timely escalation, accurate decision logging and completed post-incident actions.

• ITSM processes are adopted by relevant BPL teams and partners without excessive bureaucracy, enabling faster recovery, better evidence and clearer accountability.

• Service reporting provides reliable insight into service health, incident trends, change performance, risk, controls, resilience posture and decisions required.

• Recurring incidents and service issues are converted into problem records, accountable improvement actions and measurable reduction in repeat failure demand.

• CIO and senior stakeholders have confidence that Technology Operations is providing a scalable, controlled and service-led operating backbone for BPL.

Barclays’ payments acceptance business provides critical infrastructure to the UK economy, processing billions of pounds of payments annually for both small businesses and domestic and international corporate clients.

In April 2025, we announced a long-term partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to grow and transform the payments acceptance business by broadening the range of services offered, enhancing the experience for both existing and prospective clients. Leveraging extensive client relationships and deep experience of UK payments, we will create an environment of continuous innovation - activated by Brookfield’s global private equity expertise in payments, technology, operational transformation and corporate carve-outs - to ensure the business is strategically positioned for long-term growth.

Barclays will invest approximately £400m in the new business, the majority of which will be incurred during the first three years. Performance-linked incentives will drive greater alignment between the partners, underpinning the long-term commitment to the transformation. Barclays and Brookfield will work to create a standalone entity over time, continuing to use the Barclaycard Payments (BPL) brand and acting as the sole payments acceptance services provider to Barclays’ clients for a minimum of ten years.  For more information on our partnership with Brookfield, please visit Barclays.com.

Purpose of the role

To support the implementation of major changes and improvements to the organisations IT service management practices by driving strategic initiatives to modernize, transform and future-proof how the bank delivers and supports technology services. 

Accountabilities

• Establishment of KPIs to measure the success and impact of specific transformation programmes, and actively monitor KPIs to identify the ongoing effectiveness of the initiative, improvement areas with the IT service management framework, and mitigate any potential issues.
• Analysis of emerging IT service management tools and platforms to discover if they can support the banks transformation goals and future needs.
• Manage the selection and seamless implementation of new tools and platforms into the IT service management processes, while overseeing the migration of data from legacy systems, to improve system efficiency and reduce manual workload.
• Development and communication of change management strategic initiatives, visions and goals through workshops, sessions, and various communication channels to highlight the benefits and impact of modernising, transforming, and future-proofing the way the bank delivers and supports its technology services.
• Prioritisation of the bank’s initiatives based on their impact on the bank’s goals, resource availability and feasibility, and develop and monitoring a clear execution plan for each transformation project to ensure a successful implementation.

Director Expectations

• To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide..
• They manage the direction of a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.