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About the Role

The role is working on a busy Service Desk to provide 1st Line telephone support and advice on the use of IT services to internal business partners, students and visitors and Associate Lecturers. The Service Desk provides support of services for circa 10,000 staff, Associate Lecturers, visitors and research students across several geographic locations as well as home workers.

This role would suit someone who has demonstrable experience in:

• Providing primary troubleshooting to resolve incidents and fulfilling service requests eg software provision and access requests, working closely with the 2nd Line Senior Service and Support Technicians to maintain a high first contact resolution rate, escalating issues as appropriate to the relevant support teams.
• Prioritising their workload effectively to ensure all team work including incoming telephone calls, incidents and requests are actioned quickly and efficiently within agreed Service levels and defined key performance metrics
• Recognising and recommending service improvement initiatives to constantly improve the service provided.
• Maintaining user documentation and guidance materials and the knowledge base, contributing to keeping outward facing information and procedures up-to-date
• Taking ownership of incidents and service requests where appropriate and ensure regular communication with business partners is maintained through the lifecycle of the incident or request.
• Undertaking day-to-day responsibility for own activities and participate in any required activities to help deliver projects under the guidance of the Service Desk Manager.
• Working with colleagues in IT, and those external to both IT and the University, where appropriate.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide support for all aspects of hardware and software technologies used across the University.
• Accurately record details of and take ownership of incidents and service requests and ensure that regular communication with business partners is maintained through the lifecycle of the incident or request.
• Liaise with 2nd Line Senior Service and Support technicians and 3rd Line support teams to assist with resolution of incidents across the vast range of applications and services provided within the OU.
• Use appropriate tools to ensure the suitable logging, progression and escalation of jobs.
• Refer issues to Incident Management and subject matter experts.
• Provide support for office relocations, regional offices. This could include occasional out of hours working, including evenings/weekends.
• Responsible for management of own workload and escalate issues to Team Leader where required.

About You

Essential:

• A high standard of written English grammar and mathematics commensurate with the role.
• Proven experience of working effectively as part of a team.
• Excellent interpersonal and customer service skills with the ability to deal with staff at all levels.
• Ability to prioritise your own workload and equal contribution to the team’s workload to ensure tight deadlines are met.
• Good organisational and general administrative skills.
• Ability to use own judgement and seek advice when knowledge/decision is out of personal scope.
• Flexibility to be able to travel to the University’s Regional Centres, working outside of core hours and at weekends when required as determined by business needs.
• Ability to safely handle and move IT equipment as part of the role, with reasonable adjustments available where needed.

Desirable:

• ITIL Foundation qualification or equivalent qualification in IT or related subjects.
• Evidence of on-going self-development, including relevant hardware/software training.
• Demonstrable knowledge in a range of software and hardware environments.
• Experience within an IT user support or IT Service Desk.
• Experience of using Active Directory for file share administration.
• Demonstrable high-level knowledge of Windows and Mac operating systems.
• Experience of working in an ITIL environment.
• Able to demonstrate an aptitude to troubleshoot bespoke packages.
• Ability to maintain a good level of expertise with the appropriate technologies.
• Ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing with stakeholders at a variety of levels including Managers, IT specialists and users, understanding and relaying technical information to a lay audience.

Support with your application

If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.

What's in it for you?

At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).

Flexible working

We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.

Please note that this role is based on site at our Milton Keynes campus. The role will also require some travel to the University's Regional Centres on some occasions, working outside of core hours and at weekends when required as determined by business needs. 

Next steps in the Recruitment process

We anticipate that face-to-face interviews for this role will be taking place on-site at our Milton Keynes campus during the week commencing 1 December 2025. 

Early closing date notification

We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.

How to apply

To apply for this role please submit the following documents:

• CV
• A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the essential requirments for this role as detailed in the job description.

You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system.  Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.