Head of Service Operations

Cincom is bringing Level 1 support, hosting support and infrastructure together into one 24/7 Service Operations function, reporting directly to the COO. It covers all of our main product lines, including CPQ, Eloquence, Cincom Smalltalk, Mantis, Supra and Control, along with the customer environments we host and manage and the infrastructure they run on.

Today, these areas work differently from one product to the next. Processes, tools and standards vary in many cases, and too much depends on a few people who know a product or a platform inside out. We want one modern, professional operation that runs around the clock and that customers experience the same way, whichever product they use and wherever/however it is deployed.

We are looking for someone to build this team and lead it. You will set the operating model, lead the three teams, own escalations through to resolution, and put the tooling, processes and measures in place to run Service Operations as a true 24/7 managed service. You will sit on the COO’s leadership team and take on wider operational responsibility as the function matures. It is a senior leadership role, but you will need to stay close enough to the work to know what good looks like and to step in when it counts.

This is a new function with a direct line to the COO. You will shape it from the start, with real backing to change how we work and a clear mandate to build a professional service that customers value. It is also a role with room to grow: as the function matures, we expect you to take on wider operational responsibility across the business.

The role is remote and the location is open. Because Service Operations runs 24/7, you will take part in senior escalation cover for major incidents, and potentially travel occasionally to meet the team and customers.

• Lead the three teams that report to you, specifically, Level 1 Support, Hosting Support and Infrastructure Management, and build and retain Level 2 knowledge over time.
• Build out the Level 1 team, starting with a new team being established, and make sure it works hand in hand with our existing product support specialists in the Cincom business.
• Hire, develop and coach the team, and cross-skill people across products and platforms so we are not reliant on any one person.
• Set clear objectives, give regular feedback, and build a team that takes ownership of the customer’s problem.

• Sit on the COO’s leadership team and contribute to decisions across engineering, delivery and operations.
• Deputise for the COO on operational matters when needed, and take on wider operational responsibility as the function matures.
• Own the Service Operations budget, including hosting and infrastructure costs, and help deliver against the business’s cost and efficiency targets.
• Manage key operational suppliers and contracts, working with the COO and PartnerOne Group procurement and IT where Group agreements apply.

• Design and run Service Operations as a true 24/7 service, with coverage, rotas and on-call arrangements that match our customer commitments.
• Build out-of-hours models that make good use of the team, without burning people out.
• Replace product-by-product ways of working with one consistent model for intake, triage, severity and prioritisation.
• Bring in modern support practice, including ITIL-aligned incident, problem and change management and knowledge-centred support.
• Build a proper Managed Services approach for our hosted platforms, working across the Hosting Support and Infrastructure teams and with the Client Success Team for our key accounts.

• Own the escalation process from Level 1 into Level 2/3: product engineering teams for product issues, and Services consultants for issues in project deliverables, where necessary.
• Set clear criteria for when and how issues escalate, so they arrive with the right information, and nothing gets lost in the handover.
• Track every escalated issue through to resolution, keep customers informed, chase when timescales slip.
• Review escalation trends with the product heads, push recurring issues back for permanent fixes and inclusion in roadmaps and make sure what we learn is captured in the smart knowledge base.

• Hold overall accountability for the customer environments Cincom hosts and manages, delivered through the Hosting Support team, and stay engaged with customer hosted deployments and associated metrics.
• Make sure hosted services meet their commitments on availability, monitoring, backups, patching, disaster recovery and incident response, around the clock, providing a true Managed Service.
• Turn hosting into a consistent, repeatable managed service that our commercial team can understand and sell with confidence.

• Lead the Infrastructure team and own the hardware and deployment design for hosted and on-premise customer environments. Software design stays with the product engineering teams.
• Set infrastructure standards and reference architectures for each product, covering capacity, resilience, security and cost.
• Plan capacity and sizing with the product and project delivery teams, so customer environments are built right first time.
• Keep our cloud and infrastructure estate, including Azure and Kubernetes, secure, patched, documented and cost-effective.

• Make Zoho Desk the single platform for support, configured properly and used consistently across every product, with integrations into other Cincom operational platforms as required.
• Build and maintain a knowledge base (working with Cincom designated AI tools) that customers and the team actually use and expand self-service and automation where it saves everyone effort.
• Work with our AI team to explore and develop AI-assisted Level 1 support, including local-language support, with validation before answers reach customers.

• Set and track SLAs and internal service levels for response and resolution, by severity.
• Report on ticket trends by product, customer, region, severity and SLA tracked resolution time, alongside hosting availability and infrastructure cost, not just ticket status, and review them monthly with the COO.
• Lead the response to major incidents, with clear and timely communication to customers following a well-documented process.
• Make sure support, hosting and infrastructure processes provide the evidence we need for ISO 27001 and SOC 2, and support our obligations to customers in regulated sectors.

• Experience leading support, hosting or infrastructure operations for enterprise software customers, ideally across more than one product.
• Experience leading several teams through team leads, at senior management level.
• A track record of building or reshaping a support or operations function, not only running an existing one.
• Experience running or building a 24/7 support operation, including on-call and potential follow-the-sun models.
• Experience managing escalations into engineering teams and holding them to agreed timescales.
• Experience running SLA-based support for business-critical customer systems.
• Experience owning an operational budget, including hosting and infrastructure costs.

• Strong grounding in incident, problem and change management (ITIL or equivalent).
• Solid understanding of hosted and cloud infrastructure, Azure or similar, including monitoring and alerting, high availability, backup and disaster recovery, and management of guaranteed up-time.
• Familiarity with containerised deployments such as Kubernetes, and with infrastructure-as-code.
• Comfortable with service desk platforms, reporting and automation.

• Calm and clear with customers and senior colleagues, especially when things go wrong.
• Uses data to manage performance and to make the case for change.
• Builds trust across Engineering, Delivery and Client Success, and gets things done without relying on authority.
• Thinks beyond their own function, and is comfortable representing operations at leadership and Group level.
• Fluent Business English communication.

• Hands-on experience with Zoho Desk or a comparable service desk platform.
• Experience introducing AI-assisted support, knowledge-centred support or self-service.
• ITIL 4 certification.
• Additional languages, particularly French, German, Italian.
• Experience supporting customers in regulated sectors such as financial services and insurance, and familiarity with ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
• Experience with cloud cost management or FinOps practices.

PartnerOne is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

During our recruitment process, we may use technology, including AI-assisted tools, to support application review or scheduling. These tools support our recruiting team and do not replace human decision-making. Where required, candidates will receive additional information about the tool and applicable rights.

This job posting is for an existing vacancy.