Job Introduction

IT Problem Lead

Compass Group UK & Ireland | Digital & Technology

The opportunity

We are looking for an experienced Problem Lead to take ownership of the problem management practice across Compass Group UK & Ireland Digital & Technology.

This is a key leadership role within Service Operations, focused on preventing recurring incidents, reducing business impact and improving service reliability. You will turn incident trends, major incident findings and known errors into structured, evidence-based corrective action.

Working across Incident Management, SRE, Engineering, Infrastructure & Cloud, Change, Product and Service Ownership, you will establish a proactive problem management approach that identifies underlying causes, strengthens accountability and delivers measurable improvements.

What you’ll be doing

• Owning the problem management process, governance framework, backlog, prioritisation and reporting rhythm.
• Leading structured problem investigations, root cause analysis and corrective action planning for recurring and major incidents.
• Ensuring problem records clearly capture root causes, contributing factors, business impact, actions, owners, deadlines and closure evidence.
• Using incident, monitoring, CMDB and service performance data to identify trends, risks and prevention opportunities.
• Chairing problem review forums and driving accountability for corrective action completion across resolver teams.
• Maintaining accurate known error records, workarounds and links to knowledge management.
• Partnering with SRE and Engineering teams to convert reliability issues into prioritised engineering improvements.
• Producing executive-ready management information covering problem themes, risks, actions and prevention outcomes.
• Driving continuous improvement across problem management processes, standards and ways of working.

What we’re looking for

• Strong experience of ITIL 4 problem management within a complex technology or service environment.
• Proven capability in structured root cause analysis and causal factor analysis.
• Experience investigating recurring incidents and major incident outcomes.
• A strong analytical mindset, with the ability to interpret incident, service performance and monitoring data.
• The confidence to constructively challenge technical and operational teams on evidence, accountability and action ownership.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills across Engineering, Infrastructure, Product and Service Operations.
• Clear written communication, with experience producing reports for senior operational and governance forums.
• A strong focus on prevention, measurable outcomes and continuous improvement.

What success will look like

You will strengthen the maturity and effectiveness of problem management by:

• Reducing the age and risk of the problem backlog.
• Improving the completion of corrective actions.
• Reducing repeat incidents and major incident recurrence.
• Strengthening the quality of root cause analysis.
• Ensuring completed problems have clear and complete closure evidence.
• Maintaining accurate and current known error information.
• Contributing to improved service restoration and reliability outcomes.
• Establishing meaningful performance reporting and trend analysis.

Your first 90 days

Your initial focus will be to assess the existing problem backlog, recurring incident themes and outputs from major incidents.

You will establish an effective problem review cadence, introduce consistent investigation and closure standards, and prioritise the most significant recurring issues according to business impact and risk. You will also create clear tracking and escalation routes for overdue corrective actions and introduce monthly reporting that demonstrates prevention outcomes and emerging trends.

Why join Compass Group UK & Ireland?

This is an opportunity to shape a critical technology practice within a large, complex and evolving organisation.

You will work at the heart of Digital & Technology, influencing teams across Service Operations, Engineering, Infrastructure and Product. Your work will help prevent recurring disruption, improve service reliability and ensure that lessons from incidents lead to meaningful and lasting change.

If you are an experienced problem management professional who combines technical understanding, analytical thinking and strong stakeholder leadership, we would love to hear from you.