Application Open:
Full-Time
Job Purpose:
The Head of IT Service Management & Experience owns the experience that faculty, researchers, staff and students have of MBZUAI’s technology, and the service management practice that delivers it. The role leads the face of IT; the Service Desk, audiovisual and classroom technology, the student computing labs, and IT asset management, with end-to-end accountability for their strategy, performance, cost and AI-enabled renewal.
It owns the core service management practices (incident, request, problem, change enablement, knowledge and the service catalogue), sets the capability’s strategy, roadmap and sourcing posture, and governs its vendors and managed services. The role’s primary mandate is to continually raise the quality of the technology experience for those who learn, teach and research at MBZUAI.
Key Responsibilities:
Capability Ownership – Service Management & Experience
- Hold end-to-end accountability for the Service Management & Experience capability; its strategy, service portfolio, performance, cost and continuous renewal.
- Own the capability’s multi-year strategy and roadmap, aligned to the IT & Security operating model, the academic calendar and MBZUAI’s objectives.
- Own the sourcing and build-versus-buy posture (in-house, automated or managed-service), consistent with lean-operations principles, and represent the capability in IT portfolio planning and investment prioritisation.
Service Desk and End-User Support
- Lead day-to-day Service Desk operations across all channels – phone, email, walk-in / tech bar and self-service for faculty, researchers, staff and students.
- Continuously improve resolution times, first-contact resolution and satisfaction, using the enterprise ITSM platform as the system of record.
- Maintain runbooks, escalation procedures and knowledge content, and drive self-service and knowledge adoption to reduce avoidable contact and improve the user experience.
Experience Management
- Manage the support experience as a deliberate outcome: operate experience-level agreements (XLAs) alongside SLAs and act on experience data across the user journey.
- Set a standard of care for high-visibility support (executive, faculty, event / VIP and new-joiner onboarding), and use satisfaction, effort and sentiment data to prioritise and demonstrate service improvement.
Audiovisual and Classroom Technology
- Deliver reliable audiovisual and classroom / media services across lecture halls, seminar rooms, conference and event spaces, maintained and refreshed on appropriate lifecycles.
- Ensure readiness for high-demand teaching, executive-education programmes, institutional events and visiting delegations.
- Track AV incidents and requests in the ITSM platform, and partner with academic and facilities teams to align delivery with the academic calendar and refresh planning.
Student Computing Labs
- Own the operation and experience of the student computing labs, ensuring availability, currency and quality as the student population grows.
- Plan capacity, imaging, software and lifecycle refresh for the lab estate, ensuring readiness for teaching peaks and examinations, in coordination with faculty.
IT Asset Management
- Own IT asset management across the end-user estate – intake, deployment, tracking, refresh and secure disposal with accurate lifecycle and cost visibility.
Service Management Practice
- Own the core service management processes – incident (including major incidents), request fulfilment, problem, change enablement, knowledge and the service catalogue.
- Ensure sound major-incident handling and post-incident review, and continuously improve process, automation and integration, treating service management as a coherent practice, not a set of tools.
AI-Enabled Service Transformation
- Lead the AI-enabled transformation of the capability as a sustained change programme; piloting automated triage, knowledge surfacing, conversational self-service and automated fulfilment so automation absorbs commodity work and frees specialists.
- Measure the impact of AI-enabled capabilities, iterate on feedback and data, and feed findings into the wider technology programme.
Team Leadership and Development
- Manage, coach and develop the Service Desk, AV and labs teams, setting clear expectations and a collaborative, service-oriented culture.
- Run performance reviews and development, and maintain staffing and schedules to meet demand across the academic calendar, including semester start, examinations and major events.
Vendor and Managed-Service Governance
- Manage managed-service and specialist-vendor relationships delivering support components, governing SLAs, KPIs and knowledge transfer so any managed run-layer supplements, never replaces, in-house accountability.
Stakeholder Engagement and Academic Advocacy
- Build trusted relationships with academic, research and operations stakeholders, and represent their needs in IT planning and prioritisation.
- Act as escalation point for major or recurring issues affecting teaching, research or operations, and use service trends and feedback to drive service-improvement plans.
Academic Qualification:
A minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration or a related discipline.
Professional Experience:
- A minimum of 10 years’ progressive IT service-delivery and support experience, including at least 5 in a senior management or capability-ownership role.
- Proven end-to-end ownership of a service or capability (strategy, roadmap, budget, sourcing, vendor governance), including leading an IT Service Desk and end-user services in a higher-education, research-intensive or comparable environment.
- Strong grounding in ITIL 4 service management — incident, request, problem, change, knowledge and the service catalogue.
- Hands-on experience with enterprise ITSM platforms, including performance reporting.
- Experience owning AV / classroom technology and computing-lab estates (lifecycle and event-readiness), and IT asset management.
- Track record of improving service performance and user experience through KPI/SLA frameworks and data-driven decisions.
- Experience leading teams through operational transformation.
- Strong stakeholder-management, communication and coaching skills, able to engage faculty, researchers and senior leaders.
