Manager, Service Management

OUR COMPANY BACKGROUND & CULTURE

UPP is the first pension plan of its kind in Ontario's university sector, proudly serving over 41,000 members across five universities and fourteen sector organizations. Our purpose is to bring greater retirement peace of mind to the university sector by investing with integrity and serving members with care. As a sector-wide plan designed for growth, our doors are open to all Ontario universities.

Together, we're a team of progressive thinkers and agile doers operating within a fast-paced culture of collaboration and respect. We believe in bringing smart and capable people together to create, solve, and grow with a clear shared vision and values of integrity, inclusivity, ingenuity, and impact. Our culture is intentionally welcoming and purposefully rooted in equity, diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation (EDI&R). We believe diverse teams, perspectives, and lived experiences contribute to better decisions and a better workplace.

As a pension plan, UPP approaches investing through a long-term lens to generate and safeguard value. Our commitment to investing responsibly accounts for material risks that impact our investment portfolio to generate sufficient risk-adjusted returns to meet the pension needs of our members.

Join us in building a bright future for our members, our organization, and each other.

THE ROLE

We are seeking a proactive and outcomes-focused Manager, Service Management to oversee the performance, governance, and continuous improvement of our Managed Service Provider (MSP) and service management practice.  This position plays a critical role in overseeing the performance and governance of our Managed Service Provider (MSP), ensuring the delivery of resilient and reliable IT services including O365, workloads hosted on Google Cloud Platform, third-party cloud systems, infrastructure, and execution of core ITIL processes.

Reporting directly to the Director, Technology & Security Operations, the Manager will lead service governance, major incident coordination, and process improvement initiatives across ITIL disciplines, while also supporting technology continuity planning and operational readiness.

This is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced service management professional to join a team of high-performing individuals and make a great impact in a fast-paced organization.  

This role is based in downtown Toronto in a hybrid work environment, allowing employees the flexibility to work remotely and in-office (minimum two days per week in-office).

SPECIFIC ACCOUNTABILITIES
The Manager, Service Management will be responsible for a variety of duties, including but not limited to the following:

• Oversee performance of the Managed Service Provider (MSP), ensuring adherence to SLAs, KPIs, financial measures, and contractual service levels across core IT services
• Report data insights from service performance metrics across key domains including availability, response/resolution times, and ticket hygiene for leadership review
• Review MSP performance reports, flag deviations, and work with the MSP to implement corrective action plans as needed
• Govern execution and maturity of ITIL-aligned processes including Incident, Problem, Change, Request, Asset, and Technology Continuity Management.
• Play the role as Incident Manager for high-priority (P1/P2) incidents, leading resolution efforts, coordinating cross-functional response teams, maintaining timely stakeholder communication, and ensuring adherence to established escalation protocols
• Maintain a current escalation contact call tree for all systems and ensure the MSP executes a robust escalation framework with clearly defined RACI for critical incidents.
• Lead post-incident governance including PIR facilitation, RCA validation, and tracking of corrective actions to prevent recurrence
• Act as a CAB approver for change requests, validating readiness, risk mitigation, and service alignment before approval
• Maintain and evolve Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), ensuring documentation reflects current operational standards and is accessible to internal and vendor teams
• Support Disaster Recovery planning and testing, ensuring technology continuity plans are documented and validated
• Monitor service trends to identify systemic issues and champion continuous improvement initiatives with internal teams and the MSP
• Collaborate cross-functionally with stakeholders and technical leads to align service delivery with business expectations and operational priorities

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• 10+ years of experience in IT service management, preferably within hybrid or federated delivery models.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL v4 framework and hands-on experience driving process maturity.
• Proven ability to lead major incidents and coordinate response across distributed teams and vendors.
• Familiarity with ServiceNow or equivalent ITSM platforms for monitoring, ticketing, and reporting.
• Experience supporting Disaster Recovery initiatives.
• Exceptional documentation and communication skills, with experience presenting to senior stakeholders.
• ITIL v4 Foundation or Intermediate certifications.
• Familiarity with ISO 27001, NIST, or COBIT frameworks.
• Experience collaborating across various business units to ensure user adoption to operational processes
• Proven experience estimating duration of initiatives

ATTRIBUTES

• High degree of initiative and dependability with the ability to work with little supervision
• Excellent written and verbal communications
• Ability to design and execute repeatable processes
• Ability to organize and drive results from different contributors
• Pro-active problem solver
• Strong analytic skills
• Self-motivated with a hands-on attitude
• Strong commitment to innovation and continuous improvement
• Ability to effectively identify emerging technologies, trends, threats, standards, and products that have a strong potential to improve the organization's security posture 

LIFE AT UPP

Do work that matters. We are duty-bound to serve our members' interests, and it's a responsibility we don't take lightly. That's why we've ingrained sustainability in our work from day one—to ensure our members have a resilient future to retire into, both today and for generations to come.

Stronger together. Collaboration is how UPP was born, and it's how we work with each other and our partners day in, day out. No one at UPP is just a number (even if they are excellent at math) and every win is a shared win.

Grow every day. You'll have the opportunity to work on unique, once-in-a-career projects that maximize your skill set and probably teach you some new ones—at any stage in your career.

Prioritize wellness. At UPP, wellness takes many forms. Ultimately, it's about ensuring our people are cared for in the ways that matter to them. Check out some highlights of our inclusive employee-focused benefits program including:

• Defined benefit pension plan
• Flexible hybrid work model
• Work from abroad up to eight weeks/year
• Comprehensive group benefits including medical, dental, vision etc.
• Extended paramedical and mental health service coverage
• Health care and lifestyle spending accounts
• Fertility treatments, paid parental leave, and gender affirmation coverage
• Education Assistance program

UPP enthusiastically welcomes applications from all qualified applicants and especially invites people with lived experience as an Indigenous person, a person with a disability or as a member of another Human Rights Code protected group that faces barriers to employment to apply. Our goal is to create a barrier-free experience for every candidate throughout the recruitment process, so if you require accommodation at any point during the process, please let us know so that we can make the appropriate arrangements.  It would be our honor to work with you to adapt our processes to ensure that you can meaningfully participate.

UPP respects your privacy. For information on how UPP handles the personal information you provide during the application process, please see our Job Applicant Privacy Statement.

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