IT Infrastructure Core Service Manager

Location: London

Who are we?

Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.

People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work / life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.

This role forms part of a distributed, global infrastructure team responsible for the availability, security, resilience and support of hybrid on-premises and cloud infrastructure, with proactive monitoring, automation and lifecycle management.

Manage the outsourced managed service provider (MSP) delivering core infrastructure and cloud services, including cloud platforms, data centre hosting, compute, storage, virtualisation, identity, networking, monitoring, backup and recovery. Retain internal ownership of service outcomes, priorities, risks and escalations; use technical expertise to challenge proposals and assure delivery rather than routinely perform the provider’s operational tasks. Coordinate dependencies with workplace, application and security teams.

Reporting Line: Head of Infrastructure & Operations

Travel Requirements: Occasional travel to UK office locations as required.

Work Pattern: Full Time, Permanent

Job Specific Skills Profile

Service management and technical assurance skills required for the role:

Demonstrable experience managing outsourced infrastructure services or an MSP relationship, supported by a strong cloud/infrastructure engineering background and the ability to assess technical designs, operational evidence and remediation plans.

Strong understanding of Microsoft Azure and hybrid infrastructure services, including compute, storage, networking, role-based access control and Azure Policy; ability to assess provider designs, operational controls, availability, capacity and consumption costs.

Ability to govern core hosting, compute, storage and virtualisation services, assessing service dependencies, capacity forecasts, technology lifecycle risks and provider-led upgrade or migration plans.

Strong understanding of Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy and Microsoft Entra ID, including hybrid identity, Conditional Access and privileged access; ability to assure provider controls and agree ownership with internal identity and security teams.

Experience assuring provider delivery of monitoring, patching, vulnerability remediation, configuration management and technology lifecycle plans, using evidence from tools such as Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Tanium.

Experience governing backup, restore and disaster recovery services, including immutable or isolated backups, recovery testing and evidence of achievement against agreed recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO).

Extensive experience governing infrastructure and cloud service providers through service level agreements (SLAs), key performance indicators (KPIs), service reviews, contractual obligations and escalation processes, with clear responsibilities across suppliers and internal teams.

Desirable Experiece

• Good knowledge of Windows Server 2025 and 2022, including secure configuration, lifecycle management and migration from legacy server versions.
• Good knowledge of Active Directory, DHCP, DNS & Group Policy
• Experience with supported server virtualisation platforms such as Nutanix & Microsoft Hyper-V, including availability, capacity and lifecycle management.
• Experience automating administration with PowerShell and Microsoft Graph, including version control, testing, secure credential handling and documented runbooks.
• Experience with backup and recovery platforms such as Commvault and Azure Backup, including immutable or isolated backups, restore testing and disaster recovery against agreed recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO).
• Knowledge of identity platforms such as Microsoft Entra ID, including single sign-on, identity lifecycle management and privileged access controls.
• Knowledge of secure web gateways and security service edge (SSE) platforms such as Forcepoint or Netskope, including zero trust network access (ZTNA) and cloud access security broker (CASB) capabilities.
• Understanding of current ITIL practices (ITIL 4 or Version 5) and how to apply them to incident, problem and change management, and continual improvement.
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The role requires

Demonstrate examples of similar successful positions in the past.

Demonstrate experience interpreting service contracts and statements of work, challenging service reporting, resolving delivery gaps and managing supplier action plans. Communicate business impact clearly and influence delivery without direct line management of supplier personnel.

Be highly collaborative with the current team, management structure and business leaders.

Demonstrate a very high level of customer service and empathy to the customer issues.

Worked in the insurance or financial services sector previously.

Demonstrate a ‘Can-Do’ attitude.

Be an excellent all-round communicator through verbal and written communication

General Responsibilities

Clients

• Develop strong relationships with the Business Units
• Respond to the Business Units’ requirements as appropriate
• Support the business units with their use of the IT systems
• Behave with all clients (both internal and external) fairly and ethically with excellent customer service
• Take ownership of issues and provide updates to users on outstanding issues.

Administration

Ensure up to date records are always maintained on the Group and Company systems

Interpret instructions and issues arising, and then implement actions according to policies and procedures

Managed Service Provider Governance

Own the operational relationship with the MSP: maintain the service catalogue, scope, responsibility matrix, escalation routes and governance calendar, ensuring clear accountability for core infrastructure and cloud services.

Lead operational service reviews and periodic strategic reviews. Validate SLA and KPI evidence covering availability, incident response and restoration, change success, patch compliance, recovery testing and capacity; agree corrective actions, owners and deadlines and track them to closure.

Manage service obligations against contracts and statements of work with Procurement, Legal and Finance. Validate invoices and service consumption, track budgets and forecasts, challenge out-of-scope charges and support renewals, service credits and commercial changes within delegated authority.

Drive cloud cost management with the provider and Finance through allocation, tagging, consumption reporting, rightsizing and optimisation proposals, ensuring savings do not compromise security, resilience or agreed service levels.

Maintain provider service risks, issues and dependencies; coordinate third-party assurance, audit evidence, security remediation and continuity assessments with Security, Risk and Compliance, escalating unresolved exposures for internal decisions.

Assure transition of new or changed services into operation against agreed acceptance criteria, including support coverage, monitoring, documentation and recovery readiness. Maintain knowledge-transfer and exit arrangements to support continuity and reduce supplier dependency.

Maintain a prioritised service improvement and lifecycle roadmap with the MSP, architecture teams and business stakeholders; report on health service, costs, risks and decisions required to the Head of Infrastructure & Operations.

Support

Act as the internal escalation point for provider-delivered services, coordinating the MSP, Group IT Service Desk and dependent suppliers during major incidents; ensure timely restoration, clear business communications and agreed escalation coverage.

Ensure provider changes to production services follow internal change control, with assessed business impact, testing evidence, rollback plans, approved maintenance windows and appropriate authorisation.

Ensure the provider maintains accurate architecture documentation, configuration records, asset inventories, recovery runbooks and knowledge articles; assure that operational automation is tested, version-controlled and supportable.

Require timely provider root cause analysis and post-incident reviews following unplanned disruptions; challenge findings and track preventative actions to verified closure.

Govern provider problem management for recurring incidents, ensuring known errors, workarounds and permanent fixes are prioritised according to business impact.

Use service management reporting to challenge backlog ageing, incident trends and repeat failures; ensure the provider maintains accurate records and resolves cross-supplier ownership gaps.

Strong analytical, problem solving and decision-making skills

Assure provider delivery of monitoring, capacity planning, patching, vulnerability remediation, backup verification and disaster recovery exercises; validate operational evidence and escalate exceptions against agreed service levels and recovery objectives.

Compliance

Ensure compliance with all applicable Group and /or Company policies and procedures

Ensure correct authorisation is obtained and processes followed when required by the Group and/or Company policies and procedures

Ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements

Keep your performance, HR and T&C records current and compliant with the Group’s requirements.

Maintain accurate records and deal with correspondence appropriately

Ensure compliance with Anti Bribery and Corruption policy and procedures

Core Responsibilities for all Staff

Achieve Results through Relationships with All Parties

Delivering a personal performance that contributes towards Group and/or Company achieving their objectives

Achieving lasting relationships with all parties (internal clients, suppliers, third parties and other staff)

Delivery of Service

Consistently deliver an excellent and comprehensive service

Conduct and Integrity

Ensure all dealings are carried out with integrity and professionalism

Act in utmost good faith, in accordance with Group and/or Company policies and never risk the Company’s or the Group’s reputation

Development and Professionalism

Continuously developing skills and knowledge

Develop others where you are responsible for their performance

Must possess a passion for quality and continuous improvement

Able to multi-task and prioritise appropriately

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What do we offer in return?

A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us:

Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new

We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges

We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond

Reasonable adjustments

We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs. Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.

If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.

*Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.

Permanent