Service Desk Team Leader | Merivale

The Role
We are looking for an experienced Technology Service Desk Team Lead to join the Corporate IT team here at Merivale.

This is a hands-on leadership role, responsible for driving the day-to-day operation of the Service Desk and ensuring our teams across Head Office, venues and business operations receive high-quality, customer-focused IT support.

You will lead a team that supports a fast-paced, multi-site hospitality environment. You will oversee service desk performance, ticket quality, escalations, rosters and service delivery, while helping uplift the team through coaching, mentoring and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead daily Service Desk operations, coordinating workloads, priorities and service delivery across incidents, requests, access requests and escalations.
• Manage ITSM ticket disciplines including triage, categorisation, prioritisation, assignment, escalation, backlog control and closure quality.
• Drive ITIL-aligned practices across Incident, Request, Problem, Change, Knowledge and Major Incident Management.
• Act as the key operational escalation point for complex or high-impact service issues, working closely with field support, infrastructure, cyber security, applications teams and third-party vendors.
• Support Major Incident management through clear communication, stakeholder updates, technical coordination and post-incident review actions.
• Develop and maintain knowledge articles, SOPs and support documentation to improve consistency, resolution speed and self-service capability.
• Coach, mentor and develop the Service Desk team through structured feedback, quality reviews, training plans and day-to-day support.
• Coordinate team rosters, leave planning, on-call coverage and out-of-hours support aligned to venue trading hours and business-critical periods.
• Identify opportunities to use automation, AI-enabled tools and ITSM improvements to reduce manual effort and enhance the customer experience.

The Essentials

• 5+ years’ experience across IT Service Desk, end-user support or IT service operations.
• Previous experience leading, supervising or mentoring a Service Desk or end-user support team.
• Strong working knowledge of ITIL practices, particularly Incident, Request, Problem, Change and Knowledge Management.
• Hands-on experience using ITSM platforms, ticket workflows, queue management, SLA reporting and service metrics.
• Strong customer service mindset with excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience coordinating escalations, major incidents and cross-team service restoration activities.
• Strong understanding of Microsoft workplace technologies, identity and access support, endpoint support and common business applications.
• Experience preparing rosters or coordinating after-hours and on-call support arrangements.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to identify trends, risks and improvement opportunities from service data.

Merivale Employee Benefits

• 25% staff discount across 90+ Merivale venues.
• Exclusive monthly perks, staff-only rewards and events.
• Merivale Staff Cellar – access to premium wines at staff pricing.
• Unlimited career growth with endless development opportunities.
• Merivale Academy – online and in-person training, including Leadership & Performance, First Aid, Food Safety and more.
• Professional accreditation support – including Leadership qualifications.
• Employee Assistance Program – confidential wellbeing and mental health support, provided by Sonder.
• Employee Referral Program – earn rewards for bringing great people on board.