Managed Services Delivery Manager

AI in this role

Location: Khobar, Saudi Arabia

Thales people architect identity management and data protection solutions at the heart of digital security. Business and governments rely on us to bring trust to the billions of digital interactions they have with people. Our technologies and services help banks exchange funds, people cross borders, energy become smarter and much more. More than 30,000 organizations already rely on us to verify the identities of people and things, grant access to digital services, analyze vast quantities of information and encrypt data to make the connected world more secure.

For over 50 years, Thales has been a trusted partner of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a local industrial partner, Thales provides advanced solutions in Defence, Public Security, Civil Aviation, Space, Enterprise, and Cybersecurity across four sites throughout the country. The Saudi Vision 2030 is at the heart of Thales' strategy in the Kingdom, driving the localisation of defence technologies and systems, strengthening local capabilities, developing local talent, and supporting national sovereignty through strategic collaborations. To reinforce its commitment to localising its defence activities and to build a future we can trust in the Kingdom, Thales established SAMI Thales Electronic Systems (STES), a Joint Venture with Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI), operating under the ambitious directives outlined in Vision 2030.

As a Service Delivery Manager (Team Manager) within the DES team, you will lead a team of 8+ engineers with diverse technical skills sets, ensuring the reliable delivery of services and regional projects while maintaining operational excellence, customer satisfaction, and compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

You will be responsible for team leadership, service operations, stakeholder management, resource planning, and escalation handling, while driving continuous improvement and aligning service delivery with business objectives. As a hands-on technical leader, you will actively contribute to troubleshooting, automation, technical initiatives, and process optimization, ensuring high service quality, operational efficiency, and service profitability.

A week in the life of a Service Delivery Manager:

Lead and manage a team of engineers, ensuring effective resource planning, skill development, high performance, and a collaborative, growth-oriented culture.
Act as the primary customer and stakeholder escalation point, leading major incident management, coordinating cross-functional teams, and providing timely executive communications.
Achieve Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) targets, addressing low scores through actionable improvement plans.
Drive ITIL service management practices, including change, release, incident, and problem management, while participating in governance reviews and ensuring adherence to quality processes and KPIs.
Build and maintain strong customer and stakeholder relationships, proactively addressing feedback, improving service quality, and supporting business growth and service adoption.
Define and execute operational and DevOps improvement initiatives, monitor service and team KPIs, and drive automation, reliability, and continuous improvement.
Collaborate closely with Product Owners, Delivery Managers, Production Engineers, and other cross-functional teams to achieve organizational goals and ensure 24×7 service availability.
Actively contribute hands-on to technical tasks, including troubleshooting complex issues, participating in code reviews, optimizing infrastructure, and improving system reliability.
Work directly with engineers to design and implement scalable, high-availability solutions, leveraging industry best practices.
You will ensure traffic boosting and service usage of managed services by collaborating with the Account/Marketing team.
You will be the owner of project financial management, respecting the management approved margins

Qualification

Education, Experience, Knowledge and Skills

To succeed at this job, you must have: experience with overseeing project scope and requirements, SLAs, change and customer relationship management, project handovers and ITIL foundation, practitioner, service manager and practitioner release and control certifications.
You must be fluent in English and Arabic.
We would like someone to join our team who has strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
You must have a Degree in Computer, Electrical or Telecommunications Engineering or a related field.
We are looking for someone with 10+ years of experience in software and services delivery, including at least 3 years of experience managing engineering teams of at least 5 team members.
Proven experience in operations or team management within IT or technical environments.
Knowledge of IT Service Management (ITSM) processes and tools, project management, SLAs, and change management.
Hands-on experience with key technologies such as Public Cloud Operations (preferred GCP), Linux Administration, Application Support, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes/Docker.
You must have experience in project budgeting and financials management.

At Thales we provide CAREERS and not only jobs. With Thales employing 80,000 employees in 68 countries our mobility policy enables thousands of employees each year to develop their careers at home and abroad, in their existing areas of expertise or by branching out into new fields. Together we believe that embracing flexibility is a smarter way of working. Great journeys start here, apply now!

How we score this

Managed Services Delivery Manager at Thales scores 38 out of 100 on AI centrality, which makes it AI Level 1 of 4 (Little AI) on this board. The level measures how much of the work is AI, not seniority.

Classification

AI Level 1. The work itself involves no AI, or AI only appears as scenery, such as a company tagline.