Oak Furniture land is a beloved British furniture retailer with a passion for helping people create their dream homes. We are committed to providing exceptional quality and stylish furniture at accessible prices. As we continue to grow and evolve, we're looking for an experienced IT Manager to lead our operational IT teams.
This is a hybrid role with in-person working from our Swindon Head Office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
ROLE PURPOSEThe IT Manager leads and develops Oak Furniture land's core operational IT delivery functions, holding direct accountability for both the IT Support team and the Field Services team. This newly established role ensures high-performing, secure and resilient user and site technology services across our Head Office, retail showrooms, distribution depots and warehouses, while optimising commercial value across supplier contracts and operational budgets.
In this role, you will manage six direct reports across 1st Line, 2nd Line and Field Services. You will act as the operational bridge between daily service delivery and strategic technology leadership, working closely with the Head of Technology, Head of IT Transformation, Cyber Governance and Risk Manager, Procurement, Legal and HR. You will establish strong team performance frameworks, structured training paths and proactive resource planning to build operational capacity and reduce key-person dependencies.
You will own the IT service management processes and be the single front door for IT support, including our business applications. Beyond team management, you will hold operational ownership of site networking services, working within the architecture and standards set by the Head of Technology, as well as vendor contracts, IT procurement, expense routing and operational service continuity. You will lead the delivery of new showroom and depot rollouts, lead the operational response to major infrastructure incidents, maintain site disaster recovery procedures, and drive continuous improvement across all user-facing and location-based IT services.
Direct reports: 2 x 1st Line Service Desk Analysts, 2 x 2nd Line Support Engineers, 2 x Field Services Engineers
Out-of
- Hours:
Monitoring of major incident communications and participation in the out-of-hours rota.
- Line manage the IT Support (1st Line and 2nd Line) and Field Services teams (six direct reports), holding regular 1:1s and Partnering for Performance (P4P) reviews, and setting clear individual performance objectives.
- Handle team performance and workplace issues in close collaboration with HR.
- Mentor and develop team members, building structured training plans to upskill 1st Line staff and reduce operational reliance on 2nd Line engineers.
- Conduct regular skills matrix evaluations and coverage assessments across the team.
- Lead resource planning, succession planning and recruitment for team vacancies to maintain a healthy talent pipeline and eliminate single points of failure.
- Manage working rotas, including the Saturday support rota, holiday and absence cover, and the team's contribution to out-of-hours support arrangements established jointly with the Head of Technology.
- Oversee the regional distribution and cross-coverage model for Field Services Engineers.
- Track and drive improvement in operational KPIs, including First Contact Resolution (FCR), ticket ageing and SLA achievement.
Service Management
- Own the IT service desk and the incident, problem, change and release management processes, embedding and maturing them across the team.
- Lead root cause analysis on major and recurring incidents and drive the implementation of permanent fixes.
- Prepare and coordinate the Change Advisory Board (CAB) agenda and content.
- Own the starters, movers and leavers process for IT.
- Govern the knowledge base so that guides and technical articles stay accurate and current.
- Establish and monitor service levels with the business and SLAs with the Cloud Platform team for escalations and change requests.
- Analyse ticket trends to identify training needs, working with our Organisational Development team to improve user capability and confidence.
Business Application Support
- Own the support model for our business applications, including our ERP, warehouse management, fleet routing and ecommerce systems.
- Ensure all application issues are logged and triaged through the service desk, resolved at the first point of contact where possible, and escalated through clear routes to 2nd Line, Field Services, the Cloud…
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