Head of Service Continuity

Summary

The Head of Service Continuity is a senior role within the D&T Service Management organisation, ensuring that there is an Enterprise approach to all Service Continuity activities that underpin the needs of the M&S Business.

The Head of Service Continuity is accountable for ensuring that the availability and performance of all M&S services are maintained at sufficient levels in case of a disaster. 

The Key outcome is to build organisational resilience with the capability of producing an effective response that safeguards the interests of our Stores and Colleagues protecting the organisation's reputation, brand, and value-creating activities.

This role requires regular engagement with Senior Business Leaders and D&T leadership to understand current challenges and risks to the continuity of M&S Services and to reinforce the value of Service Continuity planning and testing.

What's in it for you

Being a part of M&S is exactly that – playing your part to bring the magic of M&S to our customers every day. We're an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing exceptional quality, value, service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us.

Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special…

• After completing your probationary period, you'll receive 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.
• Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days
• Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.
• A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
• A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.
• Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.
• Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal policies, providing support and flexibility for your family.
• Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support for all colleagues including access to our 24/7 Virtual GP and PAM Assist to support you and your family.
• A charity volunteer day to support a charity or cause you're passionate about through a dedicated day away from work.

What you'll do

• Strategic leadership in ITSCM and resilience. Proven ability to lead enterprise-wide continuity strategies, develop robust ITSCM roadmaps, govern service continuity practices, and drive prevention, prediction, and recovery capabilities across a complex digital and retail environment.
• Deep expertise in continuity, incident management, and risk. Strong command of ITSCM, incident response, command-and-control models, regulatory considerations, business impact assessment, risk management, and the design of standardised response processes and testing programmes.
• Exceptional stakeholder influence and communication. Skilled at engaging senior leaders, cross-functional teams, business stakeholders, and partners; able to simplify complex concepts, guide decision-making during crises, and lead communications across colleagues, stores, D&T, and service providers.
• Operational excellence and data-driven improvement. Experienced in using metrics and analytics to enhance release quality, service availability, partner performance, and continuity readiness, while embedding best practice, automation, quality frameworks, and continuous improvement across the ITSCM lifecycle.
• People leadership and collaborative delivery. Demonstrated capability to lead and develop continuity professionals, build high-performing multi-disciplinary collaborations, ensure ITSCM integration across architecture, delivery, assurance, and operations, and support readiness for major trading periods and new initiatives.

Who you are

• Strategic leadership and enterprise thinking. Able to operate at an enterprise level, set long-term direction for ITSCM, align service continuity with business goals, and balance immediate operational needs with future strategic improvements.
• Expertise in ITSCM, ITSM, and resilience practices. Deep understanding of ITSCM principles, ITIL/ITSM frameworks, incident and risk management, and experience building and leading continuity capabilities in large, complex organisations.
• Strong technical and analytical capability. Solid knowledge of IT infrastructure, applications, networks, and ITSM platforms (e.g., ServiceNow, BMC Helix), combined with data-driven decision-making skills to translate insights into meaningful improvements.
• Exceptional communication, influence, and stakeholder engagement. Skilled in partnering with senior leaders, cross-functional teams, and external providers; capable of conveying complex information clearly and fostering collaborative, high-trust relationships.
• Continuous improvement and innovation mindset. Proven ability to drive operational excellence through shift-left practices, automation, quality-first thinking, knowledge-sharing, and proactive risk mitigation to enhance service availability and resilience.

Everyone's welcome

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.

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