Service Transition Manager (Supplier Transition)

Location: London or Sheffield (2 days per week onsite)

Contract Type: Contract, 6 months (likely to extend)

Rate: £550-600 inside IR35

Are you an experienced IT Service Manager / Service Transition Manager with significant experience of transitioning services from one large supplier of IT services to another? Do you have experience working in large-scale, complex environments, ideally with a background in broader Service Management disciplines? If so, apply now for this new contract role.

The Service Manager / Service Transition Manager will lead and govern the end-to-end transition of services from incumbent to new suppliers, ensuring zero or minimal service disruption, strong knowledge transfer, and that operational readiness is achieved before go‑live. This role sits at the intersection of project delivery, service management, and vendor governance, applying ITIL best practices to manage risk, quality, and continuity.

The Service Manager / Service Transition Manager will be responsible for the following:

Planning & Governance

• Own the Service Transition Plan and Transition Runbook, including scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, risks, dependencies, and cutover strategy

• Define and run stage gates (Operational Readiness Review, Go/No-Go) and maintain Transition RAID
• Establish transition governance

Operational Readiness & Handover

• Define and gain sign‑off on Operational & Service Acceptance Criteria.
• Ensure support model including SLAs, escalation paths etc are documented and resourced

Supplier/Vendor Management

• Coordinate knowledge transfer between outgoing and incoming suppliers
• Track supplier deliverables vs contract

Service Management Integration

• Embed ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Knowledge, Configuration, Capacity, Availability, Continuity) into the operating model
• Ensure tooling readiness

Risk, Compliance & Security

• Conduct transition risk assessments and maintain mitigations

Stakeholder Management & Communications

• Own the transition communications plan and act as the primary point of contact for senior stakeholders / programme leadership on transition status and risks

Skills & Experience

• Proven experience delivering supplier transitions or service on/offboarding in large enterprises with large scale IT suppliers
• Strong grasp of ITIL v3/v4 practices (especially Change, Release, Knowledge, Configuration, Incident/Problem)
• Demonstrable experience running operational readiness and cutover events with minimal disruption
• Excellent project/RAID management, stakeholder engagement, and supplier governance

The role will either be based in London or Sheffield with a minimum of 2 days per week expected onsite. Please note you will occasionally need to visit the other office, so a degree of travel is required.

The rate is expected to be in the region of £500-600 inside IR35. The role will initially be for 6 months with extensions highly likely.

IT Service Manager / Service Transition Manager (Supplier Transition)