INSPIRE | EXHILARATE | DELIGHT
For over seven decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. In its pursuit to excel as a hybrid luxury retailer, the Group has curated a portfolio of over 10 owned brands and strengthened its distribution and marketing expertise for over 400 international names across luxury fashion, beauty, jewellery, watches, eyewear, and art de vivre categories.
Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken to build a future where luxury dreams become reality — bridging cultures and crafting memorable experiences for our consumers. Be it by constantly reinventing itself, committing to innovation, or embracing new technologies, the Group is shaping the future of luxury retail. It delivers seamless omnichannel experiences across more than 950 stores, online platforms, and mobile apps. Driving this innovation journey is The Greenhouse — the Group’s innovation hub, incubator, and accelerator for startups and emerging businesses, regionally and globally.
What you'll be doing
The Senior IT Service Manager will play a critical leadership role in shaping, maturing, and operating the organisation’s internal IT Service Management (ITSM) function. Working at the intersection of operational resilience, end-user experience, and service governance, this role ensures that every escalation, problem, and service interaction contributes to a seamless, reliable, and user-centric technology environment.
You will lead the re-establishment and continuous improvement of ITSM capabilities in a complex, multi-vendor environment, ensuring alignment with ITIL best practices. This includes overseeing the end-to-end lifecycle of major incidents, escalations, root cause analysis (RCAs), post-incident reviews (PIRs), service transitions, and operational health reviews.
In this high-impact and high-visibility position, you will drive structure and accountability across internal teams, external support providers, and business stakeholders to ensure high-quality IT services that meet business needs and deliver measurable value. You will also lead and develop a team responsible for executing and governing escalation and problem management processes, with a strong emphasis on long-term process maturity and service excellence.
- ITSM Leadership - Establish and lead a business-focused ITSM function, implementing and governing core processes—Incident, Major Incident, Change, Request, Problem, Service Level, Service Transition, Knowledge, and Configuration Management—in line with ITIL best practices.
- Escalation Management - Own the end-to-end process for high-priority incidents (P1/P2), driving rapid resolution, coordinated bridge calls, and clear stakeholder communication. Define escalation thresholds, governance, and on-call schedules for 24x7 availability.
- Incident & Problem Management - Lead major incident resolution and stakeholder engagement. Oversee PIRs and RCAs, embedding lessons learned into processes, documentation, and training to prevent recurrence.
- Service Performance & Governance - Monitor and manage performance across SLAs, OLAs, and XLAs. Lead daily stand-ups and operational reviews to ensure ticket health, compliance, and platform stability. Maintain strong governance and reporting frameworks.
- Continuous Improvement - Drive process maturity and service culture across teams and vendors. Lead structured improvement initiatives, promote ownership and accountability, and develop ITSM process playbooks.
- Service Transition & Operational Readiness - Ensure smooth handover of new or changed services by defining readiness criteria, validating documentation, confirming ownership, and aligning CMDB/service mapping requirements.
- Vendor & Stakeholder Management - Lead supplier relationships to ensure contractual compliance and service quality. Run regular service reviews to improve performance and strengthen alignment.
- Team Leadership - Develop and lead a high-performing ITSM team. Set priorities, define KPIs, coach team members, and foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and service excellence.
- Executive Reporting - Deliver concise incident updates and executive summaries. Maintain dashboards and reports on escalations, service metrics, RCAs, and systemic risks, enabling data-driven decisions.
- Cross-Functional Alignment - Act as a key connector between IT, engineering, service desk, product, project, and business teams to ensure shared ownership and deliver seamless, resilient services.
- On Call Participation - Manage and participate in the on-call rota to ensure 24x7 support for major incidents.
What you’ll need to succeed:
- ITSM Leadership Experience - 8–12+ years in IT Service Management, escalation response, or service operations within complex, multi-vendor environments.
- ITIL Expertise - Certified in ITIL (v3 or v4 preferred), with deep practical experience across Incident, Major Incident, Problem, Change, and Service Transition.
- Incident & Escalation Management - Proven ability to lead high-impact incident response, escalation handling, service recovery, and root cause analysis (RCA).
- Service Performance & Governance - Track record of managing SLAs, OLAs, and XLAs, driving operational discipline, and leading service improvement and reporting frameworks.
- Stakeholder Engagement - Strong communication and influencing skills, with the ability to build trust and manage conflict across all organisational levels - especially under pressure.
- Vendor & Delivery Management - Experience managing internal teams and external providers to meet contractual and service delivery expectations.
- Tooling Proficiency - Hands-on experience with ITSM platforms (especially Freshservice), plus collaboration and reporting tools like Microsoft Teams and dashboards.
- Team Leadership - Strong leadership and coaching abilities; skilled in setting objectives, developing teams, and building a high-performance service culture.
What we can offer you
With us, you will turn your aspirations into reality. We will help shape your journey through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers diverse career paths for those who are extraordinary, every day.
We recognise the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies as well as exclusive employee discounts.
We Invite All Applicants to Apply
It Takes Diversity Of Thought, Culture, Background, Differing Abilities and Perspectives to truly Inspire, Exhilarate and Delight our customers. At Chalhoub Group, we are committed to inclusion and diversity.
We welcome all applicants to apply and be part of our exciting future. We ensure equal opportunity for all our applicants without regard to gender, age, race, religion, national origin or disability status.
