Job summary
- Main area
- Service Management
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 7
- Contract
- Fixed term: 10 months (until 31st October 2026 - Secondment only for current NHS employees)
- Hours
- Full time
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 990-TDD-IT-19114-E
- Employer
- NHS England
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Wellington Place / Hexagon House
- Town
- Leeds/Exeter
- Salary
- £47,810 - £54,710 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 04/01/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Service Practitioner
NHS AfC: Band 7
Our Organisation
The NHS is building a culture that is positive, compassionate and inclusive – and we all have our part to play.
As employers we are committed to protecting and promoting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of all our colleagues. This underpins our values as set out in the NHS Constitution and supports us to be an Employer of Choice, while helping our colleagues to deliver high quality services for our patients and communities.
As a flexible employer, we want to support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern. In addition, although the role advertised may have a ‘home’ office base indicated, we remain committed to supporting flexibility around workplace locations. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.
We are an accredited Living Wage Employer which means that every colleague working for our organisation and third-party contractors will earn a real Living Wage. We are one of over 15,000 organisations, who voluntarily chose to pay the real Living Wage.
Job overview
The Digital Operations and Service Management team is responsible for ensuring the high availability and responsiveness of National IT services.
The purpose of Digital Operations and Service Management is to prevent system disruption, but if and when it does - the intent is to restore services with minimal disruption. The purpose is achieved through a combination of proactive and reactive measures.
The teams are divided into six core areas providing technical and service management expertise.
- 24/7 operations centre / service bridge
- national IT service desks
- service management and operations
- service now delivery and innovation
- specialist technical engineering resolution
- service transition and technical assurance
- Services are delivered to internal customers (product delivery teams), suppliers and NHS organisations.
The structure of Digital Operations and Service Management brings centrally provisioned IT Service Desks into one team and also builds on the strategy to deliver IT enterprise tooling that will enable IT operations efficiencies in the merged organisations.
Main duties of the job
As a Service Practitioner within one of our teams, you could be involved in a wide array of tasks to support in this activity. Examples include: -
- Attending and contributing to stand-up meetings to discuss tasks, progress and issues.
- Being responsible for the day-to-day tasks and activities required to support the ongoing running of the services. This could include taking responsibility, as an individual and as part of the wider team, for incident management, problem management, release management, capacity management, availability management, and business as usual stakeholder engagement.
- Being responsible for contributing to the creation, and subsequent measurement, of performance metrics to address any service improvements.
- Undertaking Stakeholder engagement and management, improving working relationships with the service suppliers and customers.
- Being responsible for supporting the service manager with remedial work for service related risks, issues, escalations and stakeholder engagement.
- Being responsible for improving relationships with end users to improve Service Management’s understanding of the service(s).
- Being responsible for participating in service improvement activity through short, sprint based focussed activity.
- Being responsible for supporting the team in the introduction of services from the design stage of the service lifecycle.
Working for our organisation
Our work supports the NHS to deliver high quality services for patients and best value for taxpayers.
Our staff bring expertise across hundreds of specialisms — including clinical, operational, commissioning, technology, data science, cyber security, software engineering, education, and commercial — enabling us to design and deliver high-quality NHS services.
We lead the NHS in England by:
- Enabling local systems and providers to improve the health of their people and patients and reduce health inequalities
- Making the NHS a great place to work, where our people can make a difference and achieve their potential
- Working collaboratively to ensure our healthcare workforce has the right knowledge, skills, values and behaviours to deliver accessible, compassionate care
- Optimising the use of digital technology, research, and innovation
- Delivering value for money
Earlier this year, the Government announced that NHS England will gradually merge with the Department of Health and Social Care, leading to full integration. The aim is to create a smaller, more strategic centre that reduces duplication and eliminates waste.
If successful at interview, we will initiate an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). This retrieves key data from your current or previous NHS employer to support onboarding, including competency status, Continuous Service Dates (CSD), and annual leave entitlement. You may opt out at any stage of the recruitment process.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents.
Secondments
Applicants from within the NHS will be offered on a secondment basis only, agreement should be obtained from their employer prior to submitting the application.
Person specification
Knowledge & Experience
Essential criteria
- Knowledge and experience of working in a Service Management environment
- Knowledge of using Service Management toolsets to support and enhance processes and procedures
Skills
Essential criteria
- Service level management performs defined tasks to monitor service delivery against service level agreements and maintains records of relevant information. Analyses service records against agreed service levels regularly to identify actions required to maintain or improve levels of service, and initiates or reports these actions
- Assesses, analyses, develops, documents and implements changes based on requests for change
- Prioritises and diagnoses incidents according to agreed procedures. Investigates causes of incidents and seeks resolution. Escalates unresolved incidents. Facilitates recovery, following resolution of incidents. Documents and closes resolved incidents according to agreed procedures.
- Investigates problems in systems, processes and services. Assists with the implementation of agreed remedies and preventative measures.
- Acts as the routine contact point between the organisation and suppliers. Supports resolution of supplier related incidents, problems, or unsatisfactory performance. Collects and reports on supplier performance data
- Assists in the investigation and resolution of issues relating to applications. Assists with specified maintenance procedures
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Educated to postgraduate diploma/degree level or equivalent experience
- ITIL Foundation V3 or V4, VeriSM Foundation or equivalent experience
Applicant requirements
This post will require a submission for Disclosure to be made to check for any unspent criminal convictions.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Atif Mahmood
- Job title
- Service Manager
- Email address
- [email protected]
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