Transition Director

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We are seeking an experienced Interim Transition Director to lead a complex, business-critical transition programme for a major international organisation. This role will be responsible for delivering a multi-country managed service transition, overseeing the exit from a Transitional Services Agreement (TSA), and ensuring successful handover into steady-state service operations.

The successful candidate will provide leadership across multiple workstreams, suppliers, and stakeholders, driving the programme to fixed contractual milestones and ensuring successful acceptance of services tower by tower.

Transition Director (Interim)

• London, UK (Hybrid)
• Regular travel to Cape Town, South Africa
• Travel to client sites across the UK and Europe as required

• Start Date: 4 January 2027
• End Date: 31 July 2027
• Potential short-term extension to support transition handover

• Full-time contract
• Maximum Day Rate: £950 per day

As the single accountable owner of the transition programme, you will be responsible for planning, coordinating, and successfully delivering nine transition workstreams within strict contractual and operational timelines.

You will lead internal teams, strategic partners, and client stakeholders to deliver a seamless TSA exit while enabling the successful implementation and acceptance of a new managed services operating model.

This position demands exceptional stakeholder management, programme governance, commercial oversight, and large-scale transition leadership experience.

• Own and manage the integrated transition programme plan through to successful completion.
• Ensure the initial transition plan and Entra trust review are approved by the end of February 2027.
• Lead and coordinate all transition workstreams, ensuring alignment across business and technical teams.
• Act as the primary escalation point for transition-related risks, issues, and dependencies.

• Lead workstream leads, internal delivery teams, and third-party partners as a single integrated transition team.
• Chair the weekly joint transition board with client programme leadership and Microsoft delivery partners.
• Facilitate fortnightly executive steering committees with senior stakeholders and executive sponsors.
• Build strong relationships across technology, operations, procurement, and executive leadership functions.

• Manage programme RAID logs, dependencies, and recovery plans.
• Coordinate closely with identity, ERP, SD-WAN, security, and outgoing service providers operating under the TSA.
• Drive programme governance, change control, reporting, and milestone management.
• Ensure successful delivery of all tower acceptance gates and stability periods.

• Manage milestone acceptance and associated commercial deliverables.
• Own delivery against the critical 1 April 2027 Amazon Connect milestone.
• Present progress and commercial outcomes at key contractual measuring points in April and August 2027.
• Deliver transparent open-book reporting to client and executive stakeholders.

• Ensure a controlled transition into business-as-usual operations.
• Complete handover to the Service Delivery Manager with all operational, governance, and service readiness requirements satisfied.

Applicants must demonstrate:

• 15+ years' experience within IT and technology services.
• 5+ years leading large-scale service transitions, separations, or TSA exits.
• Proven experience delivering complex transition programmes for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) or large enterprise organisations.
• Experience managing multi-country programmes spanning five or more countries.
• Strong track record leading multi-supplier delivery environments.
• Extensive experience delivering programmes with fixed contractual or regulatory deadlines.
• Hands-on experience with large-scale Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra ID tenant migrations involving 5,000+ users.
• Strong commercial management capability, including milestone-based contracts and open-book financial governance.
• Executive presence with the ability to influence CIO, CTO, procurement, and board-level stakeholders.

• Contact Centre or Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) environments.
• Amazon Connect implementation or migration programmes.
• Genesys Cloud environments.
• Offshore delivery models and global service operations.
• Experience working with South African delivery centres.
• Previous involvement in TSA exits from major outsourcing providers.

One or more of the following:

• MSP Practitioner
• PRINCE2 Practitioner
• PMP (Project Management Professional)
• APM Practitioner Qualification

And:

• ITIL 4 Foundation (minimum)
• ITIL Intermediate, Managing Professional, or higher advantageous

You are a highly credible transition leader with a proven record of delivering large-scale, high-pressure transformation and separation programmes. You combine strong programme governance, commercial management, stakeholder engagement, and technical understanding to successfully deliver against immovable deadlines while managing multiple suppliers and international teams.

You thrive in complex environments where leadership, structure, and accountability are critical to success.