Senior Service Design & Transition Manager

The Senior Service Design & Transition Manager is responsible for ensuring new and enhanced services are designed, transitioned, and governed effectively across the EMAP region. The role provides leadership for service design, SLA governance, operational readiness, and service transition activities, working closely with Product, Commercial, Service Operations, Application Support, PMO, Platform, and regional stakeholders. The role also drives continual service improvement initiatives and supports strategic programmes, including service pack upgrades and SaaS transformation activities where required. The successful candidate will operate across EMEA and APAC, collaborating with stakeholders across multiple countries and time zones to ensure services are supportable, scalable, commercially viable, and aligned to business objectives.   Service Design & SLA Governance Lead the design, review, and governance of service models, support frameworks, SLAs, OLAs, and operational service commitments. Partner with Commercial, Sales, Product, Service Operations, and Client teams to develop service solutions that meet customer requirements while remaining operationally supportable. Support strategic bids, RFPs, client opportunities, and service proposals through service design, supportability assessment, and service management expertise. Ensure consistency and governance across all service design documentation and service management processes. Identify gaps between contractual commitments and operational capabilities and drive appropriate remediation actions. Maintain and evolve standardised service design frameworks, SLA templates and governance standards across EMAP. Review new and bespoke service requirements, assessing operational feasibility, supportability, risks and support implications prior to customer or market commitments. Provide service management input to go-to-market activities, ensuring customer commitments, support arrangements and operational capabilities are aligned prior to launch.   Service Transition and Operational Readiness Lead service transition activities for new products, services, clients and major enhancements across EMAP. Establish and govern operational readiness frameworks, transition plans and acceptance criteria. Ensure support teams are prepared through effective knowledge transfer, documentation, training, monitoring and support procedures. Coordinate cross-functional transition activities, managing dependencies, risks, assumptions and operational impacts. Facilitate service acceptance and successful handover into BAU support.   Service Governance and Continuous Improvement Drive improvements to service management practices, governance frameworks, and operational processes. Continuously Identify opportunities for automation to improve efficiency, reduce operational risk, and increase service maturity. Analyse recurring operational issues and drive improvement initiatives. Facilitate governance forums, service review meetings and stakeholder engagements, providing clear reporting, recommendations and decision support. Develop dashboards, metrics, and reporting to measure service performance, operational maturity, service readiness, and improvement outcomes.   Release Planning and Coordination: Support governance and coordination of service upgrades and transformation initiatives across EMAP. Collaborate with Product, Delivery, Support and Business stakeholders to manage upgrade scope, timelines, dependencies, risks and communications. Ensure service readiness, support preparedness and operational acceptance requirements are met for major upgrades and releases.   Service Management: Support the adoption of strategic platform and service enhancements by ensuring appropriate governance, readiness planning and stakeholder engagement. Govern and track security vulnerability remediation plans associated with software releases, ensuring risks, actions and ownership are clearly managed and reported. Partner with Customer Success, Account Management and Service Operations teams to ensure service offerings remain aligned to customer needs and business objectives. Communicate service changes, upgrade plans and operational impacts to stakeholders, ensuring alignment and preparedness across internal teams and clients.  Manage customer feedback and address concerns effectively to maintain high customer satisfaction levels.    Technical Expertise: Good understanding of software delivery lifecycle, cloud/platform operations and release governance, sufficient to assess service readiness, support impacts and operational risk. Existing understanding of Experian DA products is advantageous but not essential. Familiarity with software deployment and release methodologies, including blue/green and canary deployment approaches. Knowledge of cloud computing platforms, Security vulnerability management.  What We’re Looking For:  Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Business, or a related discipline. 8+ years' experience in Service Design, Service Transition, Service Management, Service Delivery, or Service Governance, preferably within SaaS, cloud, platform, managed service, or complex technology environments. Proven experience designing and governing service models, support frameworks, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and operational service commitments. Strong experience leading operational readiness and service transition activities for new products, services, clients, major enhancements, or transformation initiatives. Demonstrable ability to assess service requirements, identify operational gaps, evaluate supportability risks, and drive remediation actions prior to service acceptance. Strong stakeholder management, communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across multiple countries, cultures, functions, and time zones. Experience working across EMEA, APAC, an