ITSM Lead

The IT Service Management Lead will serve as a strategic leader for service management transformation, helping establish IT Service Management as an enterprise operating model rather than a collection of operational processes. This role drives service portfolio development, business relationship management, demand management, customer engagement, continual service improvement, and service ownership practices to enable proactive planning, improved customer outcomes, and alignment between technology investments and mission needs.

About the Role

The IT Service Management Lead will help transform the organization from a reactive ticket-driven support model to a proactive service-oriented operating model focused on customer outcomes, service ownership, demand management, continual improvement, and strategic technology planning. The role involves leading the transformation, assessment, analysis, modernization, and improvement of enterprise ITSM capabilities, with primary emphasis on the ServiceNow platform and operational processes required to support the IT Enterprise and programs.

The ITSM Lead will coordinate with IT divisions, program stakeholders, enterprise service owners, technical teams, cybersecurity personnel, architects, project managers, contractors, and other stakeholders to evaluate the current ITSM environment. This includes assessing process maturity, platform configuration, service delivery effectiveness, CMDB health, integrations, governance, security, scalability, reporting, automation capabilities, customer engagement practices, service ownership models, service portfolio maturity, and demand management effectiveness.

The position will translate findings into actionable recommendations, including process improvements, service model enhancements, platform modernization priorities, operating model changes, governance improvements, implementation roadmaps, and potential alternative solutions. Recommendations must align with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity requirements, project management practices, quality standards, federal requirements, and applicable enterprise policies.

This is a hands-on leadership position requiring a combination of ServiceNow platform knowledge, ITSM expertise, service management transformation experience, stakeholder facilitation, requirements management, enterprise architecture awareness, organizational change leadership, and the ability to communicate complex technical findings to both operational teams and executive leadership.

Responsibilities

• Define and mature a service-oriented operating model establishing clear service ownership, customer engagement, demand management, service portfolio governance, and service performance accountability across the enterprise.
• Identify and document enterprise services, establish service definitions and ownership models, facilitate service reviews, and ensure service investments align with organizational priorities and operational needs.
• Collaborate with service owners, technical teams, program stakeholders, and executive leadership to establish proactive engagement models, identify emerging business requirements, evaluate customer demand trends, facilitate demand intake and prioritization, support capacity planning, and align future service investments with mission needs.
• Develop and maintain service portfolio management, service catalog management, and customer relationship management practices to improve visibility into technology capabilities, service consumption, operational performance, customer satisfaction, and future technology needs.
• Facilitate service governance activities, support service review boards, develop service performance reporting, and establish decision-making processes aligning technology investments, operational priorities, customer needs, and organizational objectives.
• Establish service performance measures focused on customer outcomes, service value, operational effectiveness, customer experience, and business alignment rather than solely process compliance and operational activity metrics.
• Direct the assessment and improvement of enterprise ITSM capabilities, with primary emphasis on the ServiceNow platform and its ability to scale for large-scale operations.
• Evaluate ITSM processes such as Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Enablement, Request Management, Knowledge Management, Service Catalog Management, Major Incident Management, Release Management, Asset Management, and Configuration Management.
• Assess ServiceNow modules, platform architecture, workflows, automation capabilities, integrations, security controls, governance structures, reporting capabilities, licensing models, platform capacity, upgrade practices, and long-term platform sustainability.
• Review CMDB health, Discovery, Service Mapping, Configuration Item relationships, reconciliation processes, data ownership, data quality controls, and configuration governance practices.
• Identify process, technology, resource, data, governance, and organizational gaps and determine whether existing capabilities should be enhanced, supplemented, modernized, or replaced.
• Facilitate stakeholder interviews, assessment workshops, technical reviews, requirements sessions, and executive briefings; develop current-state and target-state assessments, gap analyses, risk findings, performance measures, executive decision packages, implementation roadmaps, and modernization recommendations.
• Prioritize process improvements and automation opportunities; support governance, implementation planning, testing, operational readiness, organizational change, and continual service improvement initiatives.
• Ensure all recommendations align with enterprise and federal security requirements, enterprise architecture standards, approved project management methodologies, SDLC processes, quality requirements, and long-term mission needs.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, information systems, engineering, business, or a related discipline. Relevant additional experience may be considered in place of a degree.
• Significant professional experience in IT service management, enterprise service delivery, or ServiceNow platform assessment and improvement.
• Demonstrated experience leading large or complex ITSM assessments, transformations, implementations, or modernization initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience establishing or improving service-oriented operating models, service ownership frameworks, or enterprise IT service governance capabilities.
• Experience developing or managing service portfolios, service portfolio management practices, service definitions, service performance frameworks, customer engagement models, or business relationship management capabilities.
• Experience establishing or improving service demand management, intake governance, workload prioritization, service onboarding, or customer engagement processes within a complex enterprise environment.
• Experience facilitating stakeholder alignment, demand prioritization, service planning, and cross-functional decision-making across diverse technical and business organizations.
• Ability to translate organizational objectives into actionable service management strategies, operating models, roadmaps, metrics, and improvement initiatives.
• Experience leading organizational change initiatives associated with service management maturity, process adoption, service ownership, or operational transformation.
• Strong working knowledge of ITIL practices, including Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Enablement, Request Management, Knowledge Management, Service Catalog Management, Major Incident Management, Release Management, Asset Management, and Configuration Management.
• Demonstrated knowledge of ServiceNow ITSM and its supporting data, workflow, integration, security, reporting, governance, and automation capabilities.
• Knowledge of ServiceNow architecture, development standards, instance strategies, configuration management, release practices, integrations, APIs, and platform governance.
• Experience assessing or managing CMDB, Discovery, Service Mapping, Configuration Items, relationships, reconciliation, data certification, configuration governance, and overall CMDB health.
• Experience evaluating business processes and translating findings into requirements, recommendations, target-state designs, implementation approaches, and modernization roadmaps.
• Experience with workflow analysis, process optimization, automation opportunity identification, and continual service improvement initiatives.
• Strong understanding of ITSM data quality, data ownership, data lifecycle management, reference integrity, reporting, analytics, and performance measurement.
• Experience defining and evaluating KPIs, SLAs, OLAs, customer satisfaction measures, customer experience metrics, operational metrics, dashboards, executive reporting, trend analysis, and service performance measures.
• Knowledge of enterprise cybersecurity principles, access controls, audit logging, encryption, privacy requirements, and security incident integration.
• Experience facilitating stakeholder interviews, assessment workshops, requirements sessions, technical reviews, governance meetings, and executive briefings.
• Ability to develop assessment reports, maturity models, gap analyses, risk analyses, decision papers, executive presentations, and actionable recommendations.
• Experience managing requirements, risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, actions, and deliverables across a complex stakeholder environment.
• Ability to communicate complex ITSM, ServiceNow, governance, and service management concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to work effectively with enterprise architects, cybersecurity teams, infrastructure teams, cloud teams, application teams, project managers, service owners, operations personnel, and executive stakeholders.
• Strong analytical, organizational, presentation, technical writing, facilitation, and problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to work within structured governance, quality assurance, SDLC, cybersecurity, and project management frameworks.

Skills

• ServiceNow Certified System Administrator (CSA) certification (preferred).
• ServiceNow Certified Implementation Specialist (CIS) certification in IT Service Management or another relevant product area (preferred).
• ITIL 4 Foundation, ITIL 4 Managing Professional, or equivalent IT service management certification (preferred).
• Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), SAFe, or equivalent Agile or project management certification (preferred).
• Experience developing ITSM operating models, service governance frameworks, service ownership models, service portfolio management capabilities, and continual service improvement programs (preferred).
• Experience with Business Relationship Management (BRM), Customer Experience (CX), Voice of the Customer programs, service consumption analytics, or stakeholder engagement (preferred).