Managed Services Delivery Manager

About Thales and Role Location

The role is based in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Thales is a leader in identity management and data protection, underpinning digital security for governments and businesses globally. With over 30,000 organizations depending on their technology, Thales ensures safe digital interactions, supporting various sectors like banking, border security, aviation, space, and cybersecurity. In Saudi Arabia, Thales has a long-standing presence, working closely with local partners aligned with Saudi Vision 2030 to advance defense technology and local capabilities.

Role Overview

As a Service Delivery Manager within the DES team, you will lead a group of 8 or more engineers with diverse technical expertise. Your primary focus will be on delivering reliable services and regional projects, ensuring operational excellence, customer satisfaction, adherence to SLAs, and profitability. You will handle team leadership, resource allocation, escalations, and strategic improvements to align service delivery with business objectives.
As a hands-on technical leader, your involvement will also extend to troubleshooting, automating processes, and optimizing workflows to enhance service quality and efficiency.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a technical team, focusing on resource management, performance, skill enhancement, and fostering a positive, growth-oriented environment.
• Serve as the main point of escalation for customers and stakeholders, managing major incidents, coordinating cross-functional teams, and delivering timely communications at the executive level.
• Work to achieve Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) targets, implementing improvement plans when metrics fall short.
• Implement ITIL service management practices including change, release, incident, and problem management, participate in governance, and ensure compliance with quality standards and KPIs.
• Develop strong relationships with customers and stakeholders, proactively responding to feedback to enhance service quality and foster service adoption and business growth.
• Drive operational and DevOps initiatives focused on automation, reliability, monitoring of KPIs, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Delivery Managers, Production Engineers, and other teams to ensure 24/7 service availability and meet organizational goals.
• Engage hands-on in technical activities such as troubleshooting complex issues, conducting code reviews, optimizing infrastructure, and improving system reliability.
• Work with engineers to design and deploy scalable and highly available solutions following industry best practices.
• Partner with the Account and Marketing teams to boost managed services traffic and usage.
• Manage project financials ensuring adherence to approved profit margins.

Qualifications and Experience

• Experience managing project scope, SLAs, change management, customer relationships, project transitions, and ITIL certifications including foundation, practitioner, service manager, release, and control.
• Fluency in both English and Arabic is required.
• Strong communication skills and expertise in stakeholder management.
• Degree in Computer, Electrical, Telecommunications Engineering or a related discipline.
• Minimum of 10 years in software and service delivery roles, with at least 3 years managing engineering teams comprising at least 5 members.
• Proven operational or team management experience in IT or technical environments.
• Proficient knowledge of IT Service Management (ITSM) tools and processes, project management, SLA adherence, and change control.
• Hands-on experience with technologies including Public Cloud Operations (preferably Google Cloud Platform), Linux Administration, Application Support, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes, and Docker.
• Background in project budgeting and financial management.

Additional Information

Thales offers career development opportunities beyond just a job. With a global workforce of 80,000 people across 68 countries, the company supports employee mobility to grow careers domestically and internationally, embracing flexible work approaches for better professional journeys.