Service Management Officer (SMO)

Would you like to help shape and drive a strong Service Management Office in an organization built on stable deliveries, customer satisfaction and continuous improvement? If you have experience with service management, governance and performance follow‑up, enjoy working where strategy meets execution, and want to be part of the WTP pension reform, you may be our new colleague in the SMO.

Why the role is important

Festina is growing and delivers business-critical SaaS solutions to the NL pension industry, where we are servicing >30% of the Dutch population in the background. With more customers, implementation partners, and parallel deliveries, there is a need for a common and scalable framework for service management. The SMO function will:

• ensure consistent processes, governance, and clear roles across Service & Delivery
• create transparency through KPIs, reporting, risk management, and follow-up
• support high quality in incident, problem, change, and release management
• drive continuous improvements and ensure that lessons learned are translated into lasting changes
• establish a repeatable setup that can be scaled across customers, partners, and markets

You will be a key driver in professionalizing and consolidating our service management practice. You will work closely with the Service & Delivery leadership team as well as with Product, Engineering, Quality & Testing, customers, and implementation partners.

About the role

You will be responsible for establishing, developing, and maintaining the framework for Festina’s Service Management Office. The role combines governance, process development, data, and operational follow-up, and acts as the link between day-to-day service delivery and management oversight. You must be able to define a common direction while also ensuring that processes and decisions work in practice.

Your key responsibilities

• Establish and maintain SMO governance, roles, decision forums, cadences, and escalation paths.
• Standardize and improve processes within incident, major incident, problem, change, release, and service request management.
• Define and follow up on KPIs, SLAs, service performance, trends, risks, and improvement initiatives.
• Prepare management and customer reporting that provides a clear, action-oriented view of quality and performance.
• Drive service reviews, process reviews, root cause follow-up, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Ensure alignment between customer agreements, internal processes, tool support, and actual delivery.
• Support audits, compliance, and documentation, and ensure clear process ownership and traceability.
• Collaborate with customers and partners on shared ways of working, interfaces, responsibilities, and operational expectations.

Who are you?

You have solid experience with IT service management, service governance, or a similar role in a complex IT or SaaS organisation. You have worked with establishing or maturing processes and governance models not only administering existing workflows. You understand the balance between governance and pragmatic execution and can drive progress across organizational boundaries.

What matters most to succeed in the role

• You can translate strategy and requirements into simple, usable processes and clear next steps.
• You work in a structured and consistent way with governance, data, follow-up, and documentation.
• You can challenge yourself constructively and create commitment without necessarily having direct line management responsibility.
• You communicate clearly with specialists, management, customers, and partners alike.
• You are analytical and can translate performance data and trends into prioritized improvements.
• You have a hands-on builder mindset and thrive on creating structure in an area under development.
• You identify risks, dependencies, and process gaps early and follow through on them.
• You balance standardization and control with the need for speed, flexibility, and customer value.
• You're willing to travel within the Netherlands and towards Denmark. Not daily, but regularly

In addition, you have

• Experience with ITIL-based service management processes and preferably a relevant ITIL certification.
• Experience with KPI and SLA management, service reviews, process design, and continuous improvement.
• Experience with service management tools, preferably Jira and Confluence or similar platforms.
• Strong communication skills in both Dutch and English, enabling effective collaboration with our customers.
• Preferably knowledge of SaaS, cloud, enterprise software, or deliveries in regulated industries.
• Preferably experience with customer-facing deliveries and collaboration with external implementation or operations partners.

Short and sweet

If you want to help create the common foundation for stable, transparent, and scalable service deliveries, this is the role for you. You will be the person who connects processes, data, and people, drives progress across teams, and ensures that governance is translated into real improvement. Here, you will have the opportunity to shape an SMO function that makes a tangible difference for customers, colleagues, and Festina’s continued growth.

About Festina Finance

Festina Finance is a software company that focuses on building life policy administration systems for the pension sector and 360-degree advisory solutions for the financial sector.

40+ customers; we assist a range of banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and pension administration companies across Europe in providing the best service to their clients. The solutions include the tools necessary for calculations, optimizations, and forecasting in the most frequently used financial areas.

100+ employees and growing; Since we welcomed our first customer in 2014, we have grown from less than 10 to more than 100 employees and continue to grow. We have branches in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK, with HQ located in Værløse in Denmark.

Highly experienced team, where a significant part of the team has 10 – 30 years of experience in the sector with a proven track record of several successful life and Pension policy administration implementations.

You are welcome to read more about Festina Finance on our website, www.festinafinance.com