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IT Service Transition Lead (Contract) Immediate start | 3-month contract | Up to £600 per day UK Based - Midlands Preferable Focus Group is a £300m-revenue, 1,400-person technology services company backed by Hg Capital. Following our $1bn valuation in 2024, we're scaling rapidly and investing in AI to transform how we operate and how we serve our 30,000 SME customers. As we continue to expand our portfolio and scale our operations, we're committed to setting new industry standards in managed service excellence, and our growth trajectory and strategic acquisitions position us as an organisation ready to redefine what world-class technical support means in today's rapidly evolving technology landscape. The opportunity We're looking for an experienced IT Service Transition specialist to join us immediately on a 3-month contract, supporting a large-scale, multi-site hospitality customer with network deployment spanning Wi-Fi remediation, SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network), and hosting workstreams. This is an inflight, high-profile programme, so you'll need to get up to speed quickly and pick up existing workstreams with minimal ramp-up time. You'll own the transition of services from delivery/project phase into live operational support, ensuring a smooth handover with minimal disruption to a high-complexity, high-profile client. What you'll be doing Leading end-to-end service transition planning and execution Coordinating handover between project delivery, engineering, and service delivery teams Managing transition documentation, RAID logs, and go-live readiness criteria Acting as a key point of contact for client stakeholders throughout transition Identifying and mitigating transition risks across a multi-site network Providing transition governance, reporting, and executive-level updates to programme boards, service leadership, and customer stakeholders Confirming the target operating model is ready before go-live, including support ownership, resolver groups, SLAs (Service Level Agreements), OLAs (Operational Level Agreements), and escalation paths Planning and coordinating knowledge transfer sessions for service desk, NOC (Network Operations Centre), engineering, and service management teams Owning service readiness assessments across people, process, tooling, monitoring, documentation, support model, knowledge management, and supplier dependencies Driving operational acceptance and formal service acceptance into business-as-usual (BAU) support Planning and managing Early Life Support (ELS) and hypercare periods, ensuring a smooth transition into steady-state operations Ensuring transition activity is aligned to change, release, and CAB (Change Advisory Board) governance, including go-live approvals, implementation, rollback, and communication plans Ensuring operational tooling, monitoring, alerting, asset data, CMDB (Configuration Management Database) records, and service dependencies are fully validated ahead of service acceptance What we're looking for A proven Service Transition background within an MSP (Managed Service Provider) environment Strong process, transition, and governance discipline Solid working knowledge of cloud and networking technologies, including Microsoft, Meraki, and Fortinet Experience delivering into enterprise or mid-market accounts Strong understanding of ITIL Service Transition, Service Validation & Testing, Knowledge Management, Change Enablement, and Service Acceptance Comfortable managing complex, multi-stakeholder transitions under time pressure, with the ability to hit the ground running on live projects Experience managing transitions involving multiple suppliers and customer stakeholders Experience working with ServiceNow, CMDB management, and operational monitoring platforms Desirable: Hospitality or multi-site retail sector experience ITIL or formal service transition qualifications Exposure to SD-WAN and network security transi