Director, Information Technology Service Experience and Support

• Define, implement, and continuously improve the support experience across all user touchpoints (ticket, chat, phone, email, walk-up, on-site).
• Establish a “one front door” service approach that is easy to navigate, consistently executed, and measurably improved through user feedback and service performance data.
• Drive service innovation that improves accessibility, reduces effort for users, and modernizes how the community engages with IT.
• Monitor end-to-end support journeys to identify gaps, handoff failures, or unresolved ownership across teams, and work with delivery leaders to address systemic issues impacting user experience.

• Drive operational service governance and coordination forums (e.g. service review cadences, cross-domain coordination mechanisms), ensuring issues are surfaced, decisions are documented, and agreed actions are followed through, in alignment with the institutional accountabilities of the CIO.
• Ensure the operational stewardship, accuracy, and effective use of the institutional service catalogue for the Service Experience & Support group, including service attributes, request pathways, and user-facing information, aligned with institutionally defined service structures.
• Create a common training pathway for all IT staff, ensuring up-to-date knowledge and evolving operational guidance are aligned to best practice service practices, supporting a common baseline of capability and service quality across delivery teams that meet the needs of the university community.

• Implement and operationalize common support practices to reduce rework, improve first-contact resolution, and increase the ability to securely complete self-service tasks.
• Establish knowledge quality controls, coaching expectations, and measurement practices (e.g., knowledge reuse, ticket-to-knowledge linkage).
• Ensure knowledge and service catalogue content stays current, consistent, and aligned to institutional service definitions and overall technology best practices.

• Define and manage KPIs within the institutional mandate of the CIO, setting approved KPI frameworks, performance standards, and service benchmarks for client-facing services, and ensure they drive operational decision-making and institutional performance transparency.
• Build and sustain executive dashboards and review cadences that provide consistent visibility into service performance, user satisfaction, and improvement progress.
• Support managers within the Service Experience & Support group to be accountable for service outcomes through structured performance reviews, capacity planning, and continuous improvement cycles.

• Build strong working relationships throughout all campus units, in order to best meet the endpoint technology needs of the campus community. The Director acts as the institutional integrator of frontline IT services, ensuring that operational service strategy, governance, and operational delivery align across IT functions to produce consistent user outcomes.
• Establish practical mechanisms to ensure consistent IT support experiences across central and distributed teams (e.g., shared routing patterns, clear escalation paths, alignment to institutionally defined service information, and shared visibility into service performance)
• Ensure Service Experience & Support operations are planned and coordinated with termly peaks in academic and research activity to support time-sensitive teaching, learning, and research needs.
• Monitor trends in service demand, user feedback, and support performance to identify emerging needs, service gaps, or changing expectations, and present insights to the governance processes for consideration.

• Provide leadership for operational planning, budget management, workforce capacity planning, and service investment prioritization across the Service Experience & Support portfolio.
• Build a culture of service excellence and accountability, including clear performance expectations, coaching, role clarity, and professional development pathways.
• Lead organizational change initiatives required to modernize frontline service delivery in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment.

• University degree (or equivalent experience) in Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.
• Graduate degree is an asset.
• Formal training or demonstrated IT service management and continuous improvement practices is preferred.

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in Information Technology, including responsibility for user-facing support and service delivery functions in complex environments.
• Experience leading service modernization initiatives, such as operating model redesign, ITSM implementation, tool or process consolidation, or governance standardization.
• Experience overseeing institutional IT support operations, including multi-channel intake, escalation, and resolution models.
• Experience implementing and governing IT service management practices at an organizational level (e.g., service catalogue, incident/request management, knowledge management, service performance reviews).
• Experience managing operational budgets, workforce capacity, and performance outcomes within a service delivery environment.

• Strong knowledge of enterprise IT service delivery models and applied IT service management frameworks.
• Ability to design and implement a unified, multi-channel support experience that is user-centred, measurable, and continuously improved.
• Understanding of service governance, performance management, and institutional accountability structures within a complex academic environment.
• Strong capability in defining and monitoring service performance metrics, dashboards, and continuous improvement cycles.
• Applied knowledge of knowledge management practices and service catalogue discipline to improve resolution rates and reduce service fragmentation.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to align distributed teams to shared service standards.
• Demonstrated change leadership capability in environments with distributed authority and varied local practices.
• Sound financial and operational judgment related to service capacity planning and resource stewardship.
• Ability to lead managers and frontline service teams, fostering accountability, collaboration, and service excellence.

University of Waterloo