Service Delivery Manager | 12 month contract

About Leidos Australia

At Leidos Australia, our work goes beyond a job title. We design, build, operate and support the systems, services and capabilities that help protect and advance the Australian way of life.

Backed by a global organisation of more than 40,000 people, our Australian team of around 2,000 has partnered with government, defence and national security customers for more than 30 years. We deliver mission-critical solutions where reliability, trust and purpose matter.

Leidos is a destination for people who want their work to have purpose, their contribution to be recognised, and their career to grow without needing to fit a single mould. Meaningful work is supported by benefits, flexibility and career pathways that help you grow while balancing life outside work.

This includes:

• Flex Your Way – Tailor work to your life with options including Life Days (up to 12 extra days off per year), part-time arrangements, job sharing, and compressed hours.
• Wellbeing That Matters – Free access to Headspace and MeQuilibrium, plus dedicated wellness spaces to support your mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing.
• Learn Without Limits – Access over 120,000 on-demand courses, alongside technical, project management, leadership, and professional development opportunities.
• Work That Makes an Impact – Contribute to nationally significant projects that matter, solve complex challenges, and accelerate your career through unique growth opportunities.
• Build Your Future – Whether you're deepening technical expertise or preparing for leadership, we'll invest in your development every step of the way.
• And Much More – These are just a few of the ways we invest in our people and help them thrive.

About the Team

You’ll join a team where people work with integrity, inclusion, innovation, agility, collaboration and commitment. In practice, that means sharing ownership, solving complex problems together and staying connected to the customer context, the purpose behind the work and how each role contributes to meaningful outcomes.

Mission Software Systems (MSS) brings together expertise across intelligence, software, and cloud to deliver end-to-end capability supporting the full intelligence lifecycle, from planning through to dissemination and feedback. The team fosters a culture of innovation, leveraging modern engineering practices and shared infrastructure to rapidly build, test, and deploy software solutions across a range of environments, including cloud. MSS also plays a key role in advancing technology modernisation within Government, delivering scalable and adaptable solutions for complex enterprise challenges.

The Opportunity

This is a senior service leadership role with broad operational and technical influence, accountable for the sustainment of mission-critical application services for a Defence customer. You will:

• Own the end-to-end health, reliability and operational performance of complex production and non-production environments, ensuring contractual service levels and customer outcomes are consistently achieved.
• Lead a multidisciplinary team of more than 50 technical professionals across service operations and the support desk, setting clear expectations, strengthening accountability and embedding consistent service-management practices.
• Shape the service strategy, governance framework and continual improvement roadmap, using service data, automation, observability and operational insights to improve resilience, supportability and whole-of-life performance.
• Provide authoritative advice to program leaders and senior customer stakeholders, guiding the resolution of complex service issues and translating technical conditions, operational risks and commercial considerations into clear decisions and practical actions.

About You

You are an experienced service delivery leader who can operate effectively across complex technical environments, customer relationships and executive governance forums. You bring the judgement and credibility to connect strategic priorities with disciplined operational delivery, while developing capability across a large, multidisciplinary team.

Essential:

• Extensive experience leading service delivery or IT service management within complex, high-availability or mission-critical environments.
• Advanced knowledge of IT service management practices across incident, major incident, problem, change, release, configuration, availability, capacity, continuity and service-level management.
• Demonstrated experience shaping service strategy, governance, operating standards and improvement roadmaps that deliver measurable operational outcomes.
• Capability in resolving complex, cross-domain service issues by combining technical evidence, systems thinking, customer impact, operational risk and commercial considerations.
• Broad technical knowledge across enterprise infrastructure, applications, integrations, monitoring and operational support models.
• Experience establishing meaningful service measures and using performance data, trends and operational insights to guide decisions and improvements.
• Executive-level communication and influencing capability, including presenting complex risks, trade-offs and recommendations to senior customer and internal stakeholders.
• Experience leading through influence, coaching experienced practitioners and improving service-management capability across multidisciplinary teams.
• Customer and commercial awareness, sound organisational judgement and the ability to manage competing priorities in a dynamic delivery environment.
• High-quality written communication skills, including preparing concise governance papers, service reports, decision briefs and improvement plans.

Advantageous:

• Experience delivering and sustaining complex services within Defence, Australian Government or similarly regulated and operationally critical environments.
• Experience in multi-vendor service integration and management, including cross-supplier governance and service-accountability models.
• Knowledge of observability, automation and contemporary reliability practices that improve service detection, diagnosis, recovery and insight.
• Experience applying Agile, DevSecOps or product-oriented delivery practices within a sustainment environment.
• ITIL 4 Managing Professional, Strategic Leader or an equivalent advanced service-management certification.
• SIAM certification or relevant qualifications in PRINCE2, Agile, SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, cloud or reliability engineering.
• A relevant tertiary qualification in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent substantial practical experience.

This role does require the successful applicant to be an Australian Citizen and hold an active NV-2 security clearance.

Due to the nature of our work, applicants must be Australian Citizens and be eligible to obtain and maintain the security clearance required for the role. Certain roles may be subject International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) requirements which may limit persons who hold dual nationality with certain proscribed countries from accessing material, or in the case of dual Australian-U.S citizens, may require the candidate to obtain a U.S. Persons Abroad authorisation from the U.S DDTC.

If this role interests you, we encourage you to apply. We value different experiences and are interested in the capability and potential you could bring.

What to Expect When You Apply

Our hiring process is designed to be straightforward, respectful and easy to navigate. If your skills, experience and qualifications look aligned with the role, our Talent Acquisition team will contact you to discuss the next stage. You can expect:

• An initial conversation with our Talent Acquisition team
• An interview with the hiring manager or interview panel
• Any role-specific assessment, technical discussion or customer step required for the position

We’ll let you know what to expect before each stage, including who you’ll meet and how to prepare. If you need any adjustments or support during the process, please let us know.

Ready to explore what’s possible?

If this sounds like a role where you can make an impact and continue to grow, we’d like to hear from you. Please apply via the “Apply Now” button with your resume. If you have any questions about the role or recruitment process, please contact Praveena Sundarakumar, Talent Acquisition.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

Pay Range:

$172,000.00-$215,000.00

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.