Standard Life Aberdeen

Job Description

Job Description

At Aberdeen, our ambition is to be the UK’s leading Wealth & Investments group.

Strengthening talent and culture is one of our strategic priorities. We strive to make Aberdeen a great place to work so that we can attract and retain the industry’s best talent.

Our people put our stakeholders at the heart of everything they do by helping us to make a positive difference to the lives of our clients, customers, colleagues, shareholders and society.

We are focused on growing our direct and advised wealth platforms and repositioning our specialist asset management business to meet client demand. We are committed to providing excellent client service, supported by leading technology and talent.

Aberdeen comprises three businesses, interactive investor (ii), Investments and Adviser, each of which focuses on meeting and adapting to our clients’ evolving needs:

• interactive investor, the UK’s second largest direct-to-consumer investment platform, enables individuals in the UK to plan, save and invest in the way that works for them.
• Our Adviser business provides financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers, enabling them to create value for their customers.
• Our Investments business is a specialist asset manager that focuses on areas where we have both strength and scale to capitalise on the key themes shaping the market, through either public markets or alternative asset classes.

About the department:

Aberdeen’s ServiceNow function sits within the wider Corporate Technology Office and is responsible for the end-to-end governance, management and technical development of ServiceNow as the Enterprise Service Management platform. Aberdeen has an established ServiceNow Centre of Excellence (CoE) that has been critical to the growth of the platform and the rollout of best practices over the last few years.

Aberdeen is embarking on a transformative journey to expand the use of the ServiceNow platform to drive automation, efficiency and digitisation of business, employee and technology processes. Most notably this includes the implementation of new products that drive modernisation and consolidation of teams and departments, and efficiency through the practical application of GenAI and analytics. In response to this the CoE is expanding and evolving its skills and capabilities to face into this increasing demand.

About the role:

As the ServiceNow Platform Owner, you will provide strategic leadership and governance for the ServiceNow platform at Aberdeen Plc. You will head the ServiceNow Centre of Excellence (CoE), managing a virtual operating model that spans internal technology teams, external service providers and implementation partners. Through effective and proactive engagement of all stakeholders, you’ll ensure the platform evolves in line with business strategy and industry standards across IT, Risk, Operations, and other key business units. You will drive best practice, optimising both the team and the platform’s capabilities to maintain and deliver a robust, performant, efficient and secure service.

Key responsibilities:

Platform Ownership & Governance:

• Lead the ServiceNow CoE and own the end-to-end lifecycle of the platform—vision, roadmap, governance, and performance.
• Establish and maintain platform policies, standards, and architectural alignment with enterprise IT strategy.
• Drive value through effective management and development of ServiceNow products: ITSM, ITOM, SPM, SAM, IRM, BCM and TPRM.

Team & Delivery Management

• Manage cross-functional and virtual teams delivering ServiceNow solutions, comprising internal staff and outsourced delivery partners.
• Provide leadership, prioritisation, and coordination across distributed teams to ensure consistent delivery quality and platform stability.
• Champion a collaborative, agile way of working across business, technology, and service partners.

Supplier & Partner Management:

• Lead supplier relationship management for the ServiceNow platform and all associated specialist implementation partners.
• Oversee service delivery, SLAs, contract compliance, and roadmap alignment with strategic partners.
• Ensure effective escalation management and continuous service improvement with all external providers.

Stakeholder & Change Management:

• Act as the primary liaison between technology teams and business stakeholders, translating platform capabilities into business value.
• Build and maintain strong relationships across senior stakeholders to ensure buy-in and adoption of platform capabilities.
• Govern platform demand and backlog, ensuring business prioritisation and benefits realisation.

Event & Configuration Management:

• Own the development and implementation of Event Management and Configuration Management (CMDB) policies, processes, and controls within ServiceNow.
• Ensure alignment with ITIL best practices and integration with other ITSM processes and tooling.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Demonstrable experience as a ServiceNow Platform Owner, or similar leadership role, within a large-scale, complex organisation.
• Experience managing virtual delivery teams and coordinating work across outsourced and multi-vendor environments.
• Excellent people and leadership skills with demonstrable experience in coaching, personal development and team building of multi-functional teams.
• Proven ability to lead, and govern, ServiceNow CoEs or similar platform-focused operating models.
• Deep knowledge of ServiceNow modules such as ITSM, ITOM, SPM/ITBM, GRC, and CMDB.
• Strong expertise in supplier management, contract negotiation, and service performance.
• Excellent stakeholder management, with the ability to engage at all levels including executive leadership.
• Experience with ITIL frameworks and agile/DevOps delivery models.

Desirable:

• ServiceNow certifications (e.g., CSA, CIS in ITSM/SPM/IRM/CMDB).
• Experience in financial services, asset management, or other regulated sectors.
• Experience governing event correlation, service mapping, and automated discovery in complex environments.
• Strong stakeholder management and effective communication skills
• Knowledge of Agile Practices

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire. One of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our benefits:

There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported.

When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around. This includes 40 days’ annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance-based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits – including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount portal. You can read more about our benefits here.

Our business:

Enabling our clients to be better investors drives everything we do. Our business is structured around three distinct areas – our vectors of growth – focused on our clients’ changing needs. You can find out more about what we do here.

An inclusive way of working:

Whatever way you like to work, if you have the talent and commitment to join our team, we’d like to hear from you.

At Aberdeen we’ve adopted a ‘blended working’ approach. This approach combines the benefits of face-to-face collaboration, coaching and connecting in our offices with the flexibility of working from home. It enables colleagues to find a balance that works for their roles, their teams, our clients and our business.

An inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives drive our actions, is at the core of who we are and what we do. If you need assistance with your application, or a reasonable adjustment to your interview arrangements – for example, because you are neurodivergent, or have a physical, sensory, cognitive, mental, visible or invisible disability – please let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment. We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance. We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.

If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.

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