The role Position Systems Manager Contract type Permanent / Full Time Reporting to Head of Systems and Architecture Location London Overview of role We are looking for a System Manager responsible for the operational excellence, stability, and continuous improvement of the organisation’s core technology systems, environments, and platforms. This includes managing the full technology landscape—across production, testing, and integration environments—and overseeing both internally hosted and third-party/SaaS applications. The role ensures systems are secure, performant, and available, while also delivering meaningful reporting and insight into their health and value to the business. Key responsibilities and primary deliverables End-to-End Landscape Ownership Own and maintain the full enterprise systems landscape, including production, staging, test, development, and training environments. Ensure environment consistency, data integrity, version control, and change synchronisation across all tiers of the landscape. Coordinate environment refreshes, provisioning, and tear-downs in collaboration with project and Saas providers. Application & System Health Reporting Monitor application and system health metrics (availability, performance, error rates, capacity) across the landscape. Deliver regular reporting and dashboards to technology leadership and business stakeholders, highlighting issues, risks, and improvement opportunities. Define and maintain KPIs for system health and service performance, and ensure clear communication of trends and remediation actions. Testing Environment Management Ensure availability, configuration, and appropriate isolation of testing environments to support development, UAT, QA, and project delivery needs. Manage environment refresh schedules, test data integrity, and system performance to reduce test delays and defects. Work with delivery teams to support environment-based issues and coordinate multi-system test cycles across dependencies. SaaS & Third-Party Platform Oversight Manage operational support and lifecycle of all SaaS platforms and vendor-hosted solutions used by the organisation. Ensure SLAs, performance targets, and support agreements are met through proactive relationship management and escalation handling. Act as the main operational point of contact for key vendors, coordinating patches, releases, and issue resolution. System Lifecycle & Change Planning Maintain system lifecycle plans, ensuring timely upgrades, renewals, or retirement of platforms and applications. Provide input to architecture and delivery teams to align roadmap decisions with system constraints and business timelines. Drive reduction of technical debt and complexity within the landscape. Operate the Change Approval Board (CAB) process: schedule and chair CAB meetings, ensure all proposed changes are properly risk-assessed, tested, documented, and approved prior to deployment. Operational Support & Incident Management Lead the resolution of major incidents, coordinating across technical teams and vendors. Ensure root cause analysis and preventative actions are tracked and completed. Manage and improve operational support models, including support tiers and escalation protocols. Security, Compliance & Risk Management Ensure that all systems and environments meet internal security, audit, and compliance requirements. Support risk assessments, access control reviews, and periodic audits of platforms and vendors. Maintain disaster recovery plans and ensure recovery procedures are tested for critical systems. Team & Vendor Management Lead internal support staff and manage vendor and third-party teams responsible for system maintenance and support. Set clear expectations, monitor performance, and develop team capabilities around operational tooling, automation, and platform knowledge. Collaborate with procurement and vendor managers to evaluate service levels, contract compliance, and renewals. Skills profile Relevant experience & education 7 years in IT systems, platform operations, or environment management roles. Strong experience with environment lifecycle and application landscape coordination (e.g., test/dev/prod tiers). Proven ability to manage both internally hosted and SaaS/third-party platforms. Proficiency in system health monitoring, reporting, and dashboarding (e.g., using Splunk, Datadog, Azure Monitor). Deep understanding of ITIL-based service management, incident handling, and change control. Experience managing vendors and ensuring service performance against agreed metrics. Experience in hybrid infrastructure environments (on-prem, cloud, SaaS). Familiarity with environment orchestration, containerisation, or infrastructure-as-code tools. Experience working in Agile/DevOps environments. ITIL certification and/or cloud platform certification (Azure, AWS).