The Service Desk Manager will lead and continuously improve a client-facing Service Desk while owning the Atlassian service management platform (Jira Service Management, Confluence, Jira Software, Refined). This role combines service leadership, platform governance, client onboarding, incident communication, reporting, and first-line team leadership to ensure a trusted, scalable support function across multiple clients.
What You'll Do
- Lead the day-to-day operation and continuous improvement of a client-facing Service Desk
- Ensure consistent and professional handling of incidents, service requests, and operational coordination
- Maintain clear standards for ticket handling, communication, escalation, and service quality
- Help ensure the Service Desk remains a trusted and scalable support function across clients
- Own and manage the service management platform across Jira Service Management, Confluence, Jira Software, and Refined
- Maintain and improve request types, workflows, queues, SLAs, automations, knowledge base structure, and portal design
- Ensure the platform remains governed, maintainable, secure, and user-friendly
- Define and maintain standards for naming, structure, permissions, and service management configuration
- Manage onboarding, offboarding, and access changes for internal users and external client users
- Maintain strong permission governance and safe external access patterns
- Act as a control point for admin-level changes and platform-wide configuration updates
- Ensure access and platform changes follow agreed governance and do not introduce avoidable risk
- Lead onboarding of new clients to the Service Desk model
- Deliver process walkthroughs, portal onboarding, and usage guidance for client stakeholders
- Ensure clients understand severity models, escalation paths, response expectations, and communication practices
- Drive adoption of self-service through well-structured portals and knowledge base content
- Ensure incident intake, routing, escalation, and communication practices are structured and consistently applied
- Improve the quality of incident communication, especially for higher-priority incidents
- Support strong evidence capture, clear handovers, and accurate ticket timelines
- Help ensure incident records support post-incident reviews and follow-up actions
- Own the reporting function across clients, including cadence, templates, minimum data standards, and coordination of inputs
- Ensure operational reports are delivered consistently, on time, and to a high standard
- Drive reporting maturity through standardisation and automation where possible
- Write or quality-check executive summaries and operational narratives in strong, stakeholder-friendly English
- Lead and develop the first-line support team, including quality follow-up, coaching, and process discipline
- Define and enforce minimum standards for ticket quality, troubleshooting, escalation notes, and communication
- Run quality reviews and identify opportunities for service improvement and team development
- Help mature the team through structured feedback, enablement, and operational follow-through
- Coordinate on-call rota schedules together with relevant participants and stakeholders
- Handle rota changes, swaps, holiday planning, and coverage gaps
- Ensure escalation paths and engagement rules are clearly documented and communicated
- Work closely with Cloud Operations, engineering teams, and service stakeholders to improve support readiness
- Support stronger handovers, better knowledge capture, and more effective support around incidents and change activity
What We're Looking For
- Strong experience in service desk management, support operations, and incident management
- Hands-on experience with Jira Service Management and related Atlassian tools
- Experience running a client-facing support function
- Experience onboarding stakeholders and driving adoption of service management processes and tooling
- Strong understanding of ticket quality, escalation discipline, stakeholder communication, and operational process governance
- Strong organisational and coordination skills across teams, standards, and operational cadences
- Excellent English communication skills, written and verbal, including: stakeholder-facing communication, onboarding and walkthroughs, incident updates, operational reporting and service summaries
Technical Stack
- Jira Service Management
- Confluence
- Jira Software
- Refined
Team & Environment
- Collaborative and informal culture
- Room to be yourself, including dressing however you like
- Social activities: wine tastings, game nights, summer and Christmas parties
- Employees staying for 5, 10, 15, and even 20 years
- Clear opportunities for professional growth, mentoring, and development programs
Benefits & Compensation
- A workplace in central Copenhagen with a collaborative and informal culture
- Competitive pension scheme and health insurance
- Breakfast, lunch, unlimited coffee & tea, and Friday bars
- Hybrid work model with flexible remote days
- A wide range of social activities: wine tastings, game nights, summer and Christmas parties
- Clear opportunities for professional growth, mentoring, and development programs
- A nice pension scheme + health insurance
- Weekly Friday bars (yup, your weekend buzz is on us!)
- Breakfast and lunch at our office
- Flexible work model with remote workday options
- An unlimited amount of coffee, tea and supportive colleagues
- Wine tasting, coffee club, game nights, grand parties, fun events
- We have employees who've stayed with us for 5, 10, 15, and even 20 years!
- There's room for you to be yourself, including dressing however you like
Work Mode
Hybrid role based in Copenhagen with a flexible work model allowing remote workday options.
At Merkle we believe in the power of diversity. We welcome all applications regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.
