Service Assurance Manager - Retail & Customer

Service Assurance Manager - Retail & Customer

Apply now Job no: 564971
Work type: Full time
Site: Redditch
Categories: IT
Location: Worcestershire
Salary: Competitive salary + Car allowance
Business Area: Halfords Support Centre

Halfords is on a journey - building the future of motoring and cycling and looking for people who want to help shape what comes next. We’re a place for co‑creators: people who want to make a real impact, take ownership and be part of something that’s still evolving.

Technology at Halfords is at a turning point. We’re modernising our foundations, sharpening our delivery, and ensuring every technology decision is connected to real commercial and customer outcomes.

We're looking for people who act as trusted advisors to the business, take end‑to‑end accountability for outcomes, and can balance pace with long‑term architectural integrity. Innovation here means practical, scalable solutions, not ideas that stay on whiteboards.

As a Service Assurance Manager within our Technology Service and Operations team, you'll take ownership of the quality, performance, and commercial rigour of the technology partnerships that underpin how Halfords operates. This is a heavily commercial role, centred on supplier and contract management across a significant partner landscape, where you'll own relationships, hold partners to account, and ensure we're getting genuine value, innovation, and delivery against agreed KPIs.

Day to day, you'll manage contracts, lead supplier reviews, and assess whether we have the right scale and shape of supply base to support what we're trying to achieve. You'll ensure spend is properly aligned to cost centres and investment boards, support audit and governance activity, and work with the risk team on enterprise risk.

This is a high‑influence role joining at a crucial moment as Halfords makes a significant push to modernise its technology organisation. There's real appetite from leadership to improve governance and supplier performance, and there's plenty to manage and put right, so you'll need to be comfortable rolling your sleeves up and operating with some ambiguity. If you're commercially sharp, confident at any level of conversation, and motivated by making a tangible difference to how a major retailer manages its technology partnerships, this could be the role for you.

• Own the quality and performance of technology supplier and partner relationships, ensuring services are delivered against contracted KPIs and that partners are innovating and adding value
• Lead commercial and contract management activity across the partner landscape, including contract negotiation, renewals, and ensuring obligations are clearly understood and met on both sides
• Assess the supplier and partner landscape to ensure the organisation has the right partners at the right scale, identifying consolidation or rationalisation opportunities where appropriate
• Ensure all technology spend is aligned to approved cost centres and investment boards, supporting financial budget planning and maintaining visibility of committed and forecast expenditure
• Support audit and governance activity, working alongside the risk team to ensure enterprise risk is identified, owned, and managed appropriately
• Operate within a squad‑focused model, taking clear accountability across specific partnerships and service areas through a defined RACI structure
• Maintain service performance reporting, providing transparent insight into availability, reliability, and operational risk across critical business systems
• Collaborate with Service Experience Leads and internal teams to ensure operational insight informs service reviews and improvement activity

• Strong, demonstrable commercial experience in a supplier or partner management environment, including contract negotiation, commercial governance, and the ability to read and interpret complex contracts
• Experience working within or alongside audit and governance processes, with an understanding of risk management frameworks
• Confident communicator who can engage credibly at any level, from technical teams to exec stakeholders, and hold…