Service Manager - Payments

In this role, you will own one or more payment services to ensure they are stable, secure, and fit for purpose. You will collaborate with technical teams, suppliers, and stakeholders to drive reliability and continuous improvement, supporting seamless transactions across stores and digital channels. You’ll be the service owner for critical payment platforms, helping millions of customer transactions process securely while enabling business growth. This role sits in the Technology team, contributing to resilient, high‑performing services that matter to colleagues, members and customers.

• annual bonus based on personal and business performance
• 28 days holiday (rising with service) plus bank holidays
• pension with up to 10% employer contributions
• private healthcare
• onsite gym access (Manchester HQ)
• discount on Co-op products and other brands

• Own day-to-day performance, stability and continual improvement of one or more payment services
• Monitor service performance, risks and trends to improve reliability, resilience and user experience
• Act as escalation point for incidents, problems and changes affecting services; ensure timely resolution and improvements
• Lead service recovery during major incidents with suppliers and technical teams to minimise customer impact
• Build strong relationships with technical teams, business stakeholders and third-party suppliers
• Lead or contribute to service reviews; use insight to shape improvement priorities
• Support operational readiness activities for new products, changes and enhancements in live service
• Manage service risks, compliance requirements and continuity activities to keep services secure and aligned to payment security requirements

• Experience managing or supporting business-critical technology services in a service management, operations or service delivery environment
• Experience working with payment services, financial transaction processing platforms, or other high-availability customer-facing services
• Strong stakeholder management skills across technical and business teams
• Experience investigating service issues and driving improvements for customers or colleagues
• Experience working with suppliers and monitoring service performance against SLAs
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills using data and insight for decision-making
• Good understanding of service management frameworks and best practice (ITIL, ITIL 4 or equivalent)

• Stakeholder management
• Analytical thinking
• Problem-solving
• Payment services experience
• High-availability transaction processing
• ITIL / ITIL 4 knowledge