Lead Major Incident Manager

Position Summary

The Digital & Tech Command Centre operates 24x7x365 to protect GSK's critical sites, applications and services. This role owns and leads the end-to-end response to Major Incidents (P1) and managed high-priority (P2) incidents, directing resolver teams and subject matter experts towards the fastest possible restoration of service while providing accurate, timely and audience-appropriate communication to end users, senior stakeholders and executive leadership.

Key Responsibilities

Major Incident Response & Command

• Own the end-to-end management of Major Incidents (P1) and managed high-priority (P2) incidents, from detection through to confirmed service restoration.
• Rapidly establish impact, urgency and scope, confirm correct prioritisation, and drive immediate engagement of the right resolver teams, subject matter experts and vendors.
• Lead technical bridges with authority, keeping activity focused on restoration, controlling scope, and ensuring hypotheses are tested and eliminated systematically.
• Drive and record decisions under pressure, balancing speed of restoration against risk.
• Drive resolution against agreed major incident targets, escalating promptly where progress stalls or additional authority, resource or vendor commitment is required.

Communication & Stakeholder Management

• Own incident communications, producing accurate, timely and audience-appropriate updates, including for senior leaders, at agreed intervals.
• Translate complex technical detail into clear business impact language, setting realistic expectations on restoration.
• Act as an escalation point for senior stakeholders' questions and requests for information, coordinating accurate, consistent responses across resolver teams and owning follow-up through to closure.

Incident Assessment, Categorisation & Escalation

• Continuously assess live incidents for impact, applying criteria to determine appropriate handling.
• Trigger escalation routes without delay, providing the initial situational assessment.
• Maintain awareness of site criticality, business-critical periods and service dependencies so that escalation decisions reflect true business risk.

Service Quality, Data & Continuous Improvement

• Secure the quality, completeness and accuracy of the incident record so that Problem Management can be effective.
• Lead or contribute to post-incident reviews, ensuring findings, follow-up actions and preventative measures are captured, owned and tracked to closure.
• Identify recurring themes, fragile services and gaps in monitoring, alerting, knowledge or runbooks, and feed these into improvement initiatives.
• Contribute to the development and adoption of AI, automation and data-driven tooling that shorten time to detect, time to engage and time to restore.
• Drive continual improvements into process and playbooks.
• Lead defined service-related objectives, such as Continual Service Improvement (CSI) initiatives, owning them end to end and tracking measurable improvement.

Shift Operations & Readiness

• Operate as part of a 24x7x365 shift pattern, including public holiday and on-call working as required.
• Support management of the shift rota, helping to ensure balanced, compliant 24x7x365 cover across regions, and flagging gaps, fatigue and coverage risks to the Senior Major Incident Manager.
• Deliver rigorous shift handovers so that live incidents, risks and pending actions transfer seamlessly with no loss of context or momentum.
• Maintain personal and team readiness through participation in recovery tests, crisis simulations and major incident rehearsals.

Team Leadership & Development

• Acts as an escalation point within the team, providing support to less experienced colleagues.
• Support the personal development of Major Incident Managers, including through structured feedback sessions and mentoring, helping to raise the capability, consistency and resilience of the MIM community.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (e.g. Computer Science, IT or Engineering), or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years in IT service operations within a large, complex, global organisation, including time in a Major Incident Management role.
• ITIL v4 certification is required.
• Experience with leading P1 incidents end to end, directing multiple technical teams and third parties concurrently.
• Experience communicating during live incidents to a range of audiences, including senior leaders, under time pressure.
• Experience working to defined service levels and KPIs, with evidence of improving incident response performance.
• Experience of 24x7 shift-based and on-call working, including structured handover.
• Experience of enterprise ITSM tooling (ServiceNow preferred) and monitoring/alerting platforms.
• Experience in a regulated industry (pharmaceutical, life sciences, financial services or similar) desirable.

Preferred Qualifications

• Composure and personal authority under pressure, with the ability to lead specialists who do not report to the role.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, moving fluently between technical detail and business impact.
• Strong facilitation and questioning skills to keep a bridge focused and eliminate hypotheses systematically.
• Sound judgement in balancing speed of restoration against risk.
• Analytical mindset, interpreting service data and operational metrics to inform improvement.
• Strong documentation and process-design capability.
• Fluency in written and spoken English.