OT Technical Manager

This is a rare opportunity to take on a senior technical leadership role at Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company, where operational technology directly supports the delivery of essential water and wastewater services to 16 million customers.

We are looking for a highly technical, operationally focused and delivery driven OT Technical Manager to lead the performance, security, resilience and support of our Operational Technology estate and associated digital services.

• Act as a senior operational technical authority for Thames Water’s OT technology estate and associated digital services.
• Lead the teams responsible for IT network operations, enterprise network security, cyber compliance, OT compute, active directory and identity services.
• Ensure the integrity, security, availability, resilience and supportability of OT systems across Thames Water’s operational sites.
• Provide expert technical leadership, escalation and decision making across OT infrastructure, connectivity, compute, security and identity services.
• Maintain effective oversight of the live OT estate, ensuring that critical services remain reliable, secure and fit for purpose.

• Own the implementation of the approved Digital (IT/OT) network roadmaps.
• Translate agreed technical roadmaps into prioritised and deliverable operational plans.
• Coordinate resources, suppliers, dependencies, and change activity to deliver roadmap commitments effectively.
• Identify and elevate conflicts, risks, dependencies, and required deviations through the appropriate engineering governance routes.
• Ensure operational delivery remains aligned with approved architectures, standards, regulatory requirements and business priorities.

• Lead the operation and continual improvement of IT and OT connectivity services supporting connected people and operational assets.
• Oversee network operations delivered through a combination of internal resources and third party managed services.
• Monitor and improve network service health, capacity, performance, resilience and lifecycle.
• Lead the enterprise network security services within the role’s remit, including firewalls, VPN and remote access services, WAN and SD-WAN security controls, and network security monitoring.
• Ensure cyber compliance activities are operated effectively, supported by appropriate evidence and subject to continual improvement.
• Identify and manage network security risks, vulnerabilities, control gaps and technical dependencies.

• Lead the reliable and secure operation of OT hosting and compute platforms.
• Oversee OT Active Directory, the OT tenant and Entra .
• Ensure effective identity lifecycle management, privileged access controls, platform health, backup, recovery and technical support.
• Manage technical risks and improvement opportunities across OT compute, directory and identity services.
• Ensure platforms remain resilient, supportable and capable of meeting current and future operational requirements.

• Manage the routine operation, maintenance and continual improvement of OT systems and associated processes.
• Ensure operational issues, recurring faults, performance constraints and capacity risks are identified, prioritised and addressed.
• Apply effective incident, problem, change, capacity and service improvement practices across the live estate.
• Establish meaningful operational KPIs and service measures covering performance, resilience, supportability and improvement.
• Ensure lessons learned from incidents, operational events and service reviews are translated into practical…