Service Delivery Manager
Summary
Leads a managed IT services delivery team at In-Telecom, owning client experience, SLA/KPI performance, ticket and escalation oversight, problem management, and technician coaching. Requires 5+ years in IT service delivery (MSP preferred), 2+ years leading technical staff, and familiarity with ConnectWise, Microsoft 365, and ITIL-style practices.
The Service Delivery Manager is responsible for the day-to-day performance, accountability, and client experience of an assigned service delivery team and client portfolio within our Managed Services organization.
This role owns service outcomes—not simply ticket activity. The Service Delivery Manager is expected to ensure issues are properly prioritized, recurring problems are identified and permanently addressed, service commitments are met, technicians are held accountable to expectations, and clients receive consistent, proactive communication.
The Service Delivery Manager serves as the operational owner of the client experience within Service Delivery and works closely with Engineering, Cybersecurity, Field Services, Voice, Client Success, vCIO, Projects, and other internal teams to ensure client issues move forward without unnecessary handoffs, delays, or gaps in ownership.
Success in this role requires strong operational discipline, technical awareness, leadership, urgency, and the ability to identify patterns before they become larger client-impacting problems.
Service Delivery & Client Experience
- Own the overall service experience and operational performance of assigned clients and service teams.
- Ensure issues are prioritized based on business impact, urgency, security risk, affected users, and client expectations.
- Maintain visibility into escalations, aging work, stalled tickets, recurring issues, and other conditions that could negatively impact the client experience.
- Ensure clients receive timely, accurate, and proactive communication throughout significant service issues.
- Recognize when individual tickets represent a broader technical or service problem and drive the appropriate response.
- Ensure client concerns, declining sentiment, repeat complaints, and service risks are identified and addressed before they become larger relationship issues.
- Partner with Client Success and vCIO teams on significant service concerns, recurring technical issues, risks, and recommended next steps.
Oversight Operational & Ticket Management
- Maintain daily oversight of service activity and ensure tickets are progressing appropriately.
- Monitor aging tickets, excessive labor, stalled work, repeat incidents, high-impact issues, escalations, and tickets approaching or exceeding service expectations.
- Ensure every significant issue has clear ownership, next steps, appropriate follow-up, and a path to resolution.
- Ensure technicians consistently meet expectations for ticket documentation, communication, time entry, troubleshooting, escalation, and end-user confirmation.
- Ensure escalations contain sufficient troubleshooting, documentation, and business context before engaging higher-level resources.
- Prevent tickets from stalling because of internal handoffs or unclear ownership.
- Coordinate resources across teams when an issue requires additional expertise.
Problem Management & Continuous Improvement
- Build a culture of ownership where employees are expected to solve problems rather than simply process tickets.
- Proactively identify recurring incidents, service trends, environmental weaknesses, and systemic problems.
- Ensure repeat issues move into root-cause or problem-management workflows rather than continuing to receive temporary fixes.
- Coordinate with Engineering, Cybersecurity, Central Services, vendors, and other resources to determine root cause and corrective action.
- Track identified problems through resolution and verify agreed-upon corrective actions are completed.
- Use service trends to identify opportunities for standardization, automation, documentation, training, or infrastructure improvement.
- Escalate issues requiring larger technical, architectural, project, budget, or business decisions to the appropriate teams.
Team Leadership & Accountability
- Lead, coach, develop, and hold accountable assigned service delivery employees.
- Set clear expectations for ownership, responsiveness, productivity, technical troubleshooting, documentation, escalation, and client communication.
- Conduct regular one-on-one meetings, coaching conversations, performance reviews, and development discussions.
- Address performance or behavioral concerns promptly and consistently.
- Understand individual technician strengths, skill gaps, development needs, and appropriate escalation boundaries.
- Create a culture where technicians are expected to think critically, own issues, and solve problems rather than simply work tickets.
- Recognize strong performance and support employee growth and advancement.
Performance & Capacity Management
- Own and actively manage service delivery KPIs, team scorecards, workload, and capacity.
- Monitor areas such as:
- Response time and SLA performance
- Ticket aging and backlog
- Technician utilization and productivity
- Tickets worked versus closed
- Reopen and escalation rates
- Recurring issue trends
- Client satisfaction
- Documentation and time-entry quality
- Labor efficiency
- Use operational data to identify trends, performance gaps, and service risks.
- Develop and execute corrective action plans when performance falls below expectations.
- Balance workloads and ensure tickets are assigned to resources with the appropriate skill level and capacity.
- Identify staffing or capacity constraints before they materially impact service.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Work closely with Engineering, Cybersecurity, Central Services, Field Services, Voice, Projects, Client Success, vCIO, and other departments to move client issues forward.
- Take ownership of the service outcome even when another department is responsible for completing part of the work.
- Ensure cross-department handoffs include clear ownership, expectations, documentation, and follow-up.
- Escalate blockers when issues cannot be resolved at the operational level.
- Provide leadership with clear visibility into significant client risks, service issues, staffing challenges, recurring problems, and operational trends.
- Support the rollout and adoption of service standards, processes, tools, automation, and operational improvements.
Key Accountabilities
The Service Delivery Manager is ultimately accountable for:
- Client Experience
Clients receive responsive, proactive, and consistent service, with risks and concerns addressed before they become larger issues. - Service Performance
The team consistently performs against established SLAs, KPIs, productivity standards, and operational expectations. - Issue Ownership & Resolution
Significant issues have clear ownership and are actively driven toward resolution, regardless of how many internal teams are involved. - Recurring Issue Reduction
Repeat problems are recognized, investigated, escalated appropriately, and driven toward permanent resolution. - Team Performance & Accountability
Technicians understand expectations, receive effective coaching, and are held accountable for performance, ownership, and client service. - Operational Improvement
Service trends are translated into improvements in process, automation, documentation, training, standardization, or technology.
- Experience with ConnectWise Manage or a comparable PSA/ticketing platform
- 5+ years of experience in IT service delivery, technical support, managed services, or a related technology environment.
- 2+ years of experience leading, supervising, or formally coaching technical employees.
- MSP or other high-volume, multi-client service experience strongly preferred.
- Strong understanding of service desk operations, ticket management, escalation workflows, SLAs, and technical support processes.
- Broad technical understanding of Microsoft 365, endpoint management, identity, networking, cloud services, cybersecurity, and common business IT environments.
- Technical depth sufficient to evaluate troubleshooting quality, identify technical patterns, challenge incomplete conclusions, and recognize when higher-level expertise is required.
- Ability to lead technical outcomes without needing to personally perform every technical task or serve as the final escalation engineer.
- Experience using KPIs, service data, and operational trends to manage team performance and improve service delivery.
- Strong leadership, coaching, accountability, and conflict-resolution skills.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively with technicians, leadership, and clients.
- Ability to prioritize and make sound decisions during high-pressure or client-impacting situations.
Required Qualifications
- Previous leadership experience within an MSP.
- ITIL, Microsoft, CompTIA, or related technical certifications.
- Experience with MSP monitoring, documentation, automation, cybersecurity, and infrastructure-management platforms.
- Experience managing client escalations and participating in executive-level client conversations.
- Experience implementing service-process improvements, automation, or operational standardization.
Equal Opportunity Employer
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- Life Insurance
- 401k