Strategic Service Desk Manager – MSP

Berkshire | £65,000–£75,000 + Benefits

Service Desk Leadership | MSP | Connect Wise / PSA | Service Transformation | AI & Automation | Customer Experience

Are you currently leading a Service Desk within an MSP and feel ready to take complete ownership of a service operation? Perhaps you're working for a smaller Managed Service Provider, already running a team, improving service and challenging how things are done – but you're looking for the opportunity to genuinely put your stamp on something. This could be exactly that opportunity.

We're working with a growing Managed Service Provider looking for a Group Service Desk Manager to take ownership of its Service Desk operation and help shape what it looks like through its next stage of growth. This isn't about inheriting a broken Service Desk. You'll inherit a talented team of approximately 17 people, predominantly based in Maidenhead, within a successful MSP that currently turns over around £10m and has ambitious plans to approximately double in size over the next two years.

What they need now is someone with the drive, personality and strategic mindset to take what they have and make it better.

This is much more than keeping the lights on and managing tickets. You'll take ownership of the Service Desk offering, setting direction across people, process, systems, customer experience, reporting, automation and continuous improvement. You'll be expected to look at the operation and ask:
What can we improve? What should we change? What can we automate? How can we use AI? Are we measuring the right things? Are customers receiving what they're paying for? And is the Service Desk structured correctly for where the business is going – not just where it is today? You'll have the backing to actually implement those changes. The business is continuing to grow organically and through acquisition, meaning the Service Desk could almost double in size.

You'll therefore play an important role in designing an operation capable of scaling with that growth.

You'll lead the Service Desk operation across Maidenhead and Hemel Hempstead, sitting above the existing Team Lead and escalation capability.

• Service Desk strategy, performance and continuous improvement
• SLA performance, ticket volumes, ageing, backlogs and service quality
• Connect Wise / PSA utilisation, reporting, dashboards and meaningful KPIs
• Customer satisfaction, service reviews and senior escalations
• Team performance, accountability, development and resource planning
• Service Desk processes, structure and operating standards
• AI, automation and opportunities to remove repetitive/manual activity
• Major incidents, problem management and service improvement
• Building a scalable Service Desk model to support continued company growth
• Helping shape the future 1st/2nd Line structure and technical support pillars

We don't want someone who simply produces a report showing that a KPI has gone backwards. We want someone who asks why, fixes the underlying problem, implements the change and then demonstrates the improvement through the numbers.

MSP experience is important. You'll understand the pace, customer expectations and commercial realities of delivering Managed Services across multiple customers. You don't need to be the strongest engineer in the room and this is not a hands‑on technical position. However, you do need to live and breathe technology. You should understand enough to challenge your technical teams, recognise when something doesn't sound right and confidently sit in front of customers and hold your own in technical service conversations.

• Leadership of a Service Desk /…