Major Incident & Problem Manager

Join the Access Family and see how we make software ideas become a reality!

We are the largest UK-based software house, with a truly global and rapidly expanding footprint.  Our core value of ‘Love work, Love life’ has been central to our success.  We’re looking for people to join us who share our passion for making things better every day and delivering an amazing customer experience.

Are you ready for the challenge?

What are we all about?

At Access we love software and how technology never stays the same. It's this obsession that drives us to work closely across sectors to understand the business needs of our customers - from professional services to manufacturing to not for profits and more.

We're passionate about helping our customers stay one step ahead of the challenges facing their industry and business. That's why over 2 million users and over 50,000 organisations rely on Access software to help their organisation thrive.

You’ll be part of a forward-thinking, ambitious company that is entering its next level of growth. To be considered for this role you must have a passion for technology, have worked in a customer service environment and possess exceptional communication skills.

We pride ourselves on having a happy, humble and hungry workforce so if you’re looking for something different – to work hard but actually have some fun at the same time, then join the wonderful team here at Access!

About you:

With a track record in successful IT organisations and IT Service Management communities, particularly in leading the management and resolution of enterprise-scale major incidents and problem records, you will bring a level of process, structure and governance to a fast-paced, rapidly-growing, global software and services organisation.

Reporting to the Lead Major Incident & Problem Manager, you will be comfortable and composed working under pressure, leading and supporting colleagues in pursuit of restoration of service and elimination of root-cause faults, for our internal colleagues and external customers.  Your assured presence, robust methods and first-class direction will bring clarity and leadership when it’s needed the most.

Day-to-day, you will:

• Support the Lead Major Incident & Problem Manager (MIM + PM) in the continued evolution of our MIM and PM policies and processes
• Interface with technology support staff (technical engineers, including infrastructure and software) and business stakeholders, to foster collaboration and communication across a virtual working group.
• Create positive working relationships with business unit support personnel to build domain experience and product knowledge
• Ensure appropriate high severity incident (HSI) and MI alerting and information is visibly integrated into the team, whether through monitoring or ticket management tooling (ITSM).
• Execute and continuously improve the enterprise-wide federated Major Incident Management Process and ensure supporting artifacts and tooling are to the required standard (drive the major incident management lifecycle)
• Ensure MI communications are timely, consistent and of the right quality to ensure all the right communities within the business have the information they need.
• Support the Lead Major Incident & Problem Manager to define and deliver a continuous improvement roadmap that drives change in horizontal and vertical business units to ensure we are as prepared for an outage as we can be (be highly proactive where-ever possible, not reactive)
• Bring domain expertise and thought leadership, with an eye on pace and pragmatism.
• Be flexible in your working hours (within reason), to ensure urgent matters are not left unresolved and to meet the location / time zone requirements across the business.
  • Note: this is an 8 x 7 role (with some occasional flexibility required), not a 24 x 7 role
  • 24 hour coverage will be met by leveraging our follow-the-sun operation, with resources in appropriate time-zone geographies collaborating to provide ‘around the clock’ cover
• Be prepared to participate in a weekend-rota to provide Saturday + Sunday cover, as well as core-hour cover (Mon to Fri, ~9am to 5pm).
• Drive the Root Cause Analysis process post incident review process (PIR) and ensure ongoing visibility and ownership of actions is clear and managed.
• Apply structured problem management approaches to our re-occurring, high severity incidents; champion the problem management lifecycle
• Contribute to our demand management process: analyse major incident trends and identify themes and patterns of demand, along with associated treatment plans: elimination, deflection, automation, self-service of demand (high and low-severity tickets, including both incidents and service requests)
• Work with our in-house automation and data science team to automate the assessment of risk and, wherever possible (including time to next fault, likely location of next fault)
• Production of regular reports (weekly, fortnightly, monthly) to objectively describe progress in your area, including improvement in key stats, such as MTBF, MTTD, MTTR, Cost per Incident.
• Work closely with the Group IT Change Manager, to ensure that incidents resulting from changes are minimised, through the application of proactive best-practice
• Liaise with 3^rd parties as required, in order to ensure prevention and resolution of incidents, problems, changes

Required Experience:

• 3+ years’ experience working in a corporate IT environment, a thorough understanding of service management, with at least 2 years demonstrable success in a Major Incident Management and / or Problem Management role
• ITIL Foundation certified
• Solid experience of the Incident, Problem, Change disciplines within ITIL
• Experience in handling large customer / business IT incidents
• Working in pressured IT environments where customer and commercial impact is high
• Excellent communication skills including formal presentations.
• Demonstrable awareness of business and operational environments.
• Proven ability to manage and motivate team members and lead by example
• Broad understanding of enterprise IT infrastructure (servers, networks), end-user-compute infrastructure (e.g. laptops, desktops, smart phones), corporate software (e.g. Microsoft 365 stack), common line of business software (e.g. SalesForce, SAP) and a basic understanding of the tools used in a bespoke software development house.
• Solid understanding of IT Service Management tools (ITSM), e.g. Fresh Service, Service Now, Remedy on Demand / Helix.
• Proven track record for proactively reducing incoming demand, through the application of structured problem management techniques and demand management

What does Access offer you?

We are a growing software company and we deliver on what we say we do! We take the development of our people very seriously! We will work with you to carve out your success plan and an opportunity to accelerate your career and make a real difference.

In addition to our standard benefits of 25 days holiday, a match contributory pension and healthcare you will get:  

• A Competitive Salary
• Giving Back/Charity days
• Quarterly Socials
• 6 weeks Sabbaticals (after 6 years of service)
• The Access Group Big Break: our all-expenses paid holiday, available to all staff (discretionary)
• Fantastic work-life balance
  • We pride ourselves on employee engagement & wellbeing: we believe key to our company success is that all employees Love Work, Love Life! 
    • As such, most roles at The Access Group are highly-flexible (for the benefit of our employees), particularly in working location and occasionally in working pattern (subject to agreement with your line manager)
  • This is a home-based / remote-based role, with occasional (anticipated 1 day per week, maximum) office presence, where appropriate / value-adding

Join Us and become part of our amazing Access family!