Managed Service Operations Manager - MENA

Job Description

Position title: Head of Managed Service Operations 

Reports to: CEO

Department: Managed Service Operations

Location: Middle East and Africa

Job Overview

As the Head of Managed Service Operations at LigaData, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth and efficient operation of the support function. You will lead a team of support MSO Engineers, design and optimize support processes, manage ticketing systems, establish escalation procedures, and drive continuous improvement initiatives. Your primary objective will be to ensure high customer satisfaction, efficient issue resolution, continuous enhancement and cost efficiency of LigaData's support operations.

Responsibilities:

1. Team Leadership:
   • Lead and manage a team of MSO Engineers, providing guidance, coaching, and performance feedback.
   • Ensure your team has the necessary skills, resources, and support to deliver effective technical assistance to customers.
   • Cross-functional leadership and management in managing and negotiating the ownership and resolution plans of issues and tickets across different teams or departments involve coordinating and facilitating the collaboration between teams to ensure efficient and effective issue resolution while meeting customer expectations.
   • Exhibit strong leadership skills to provide constructive feedback to product and deployment teams. Having the confidence and assertiveness to push back and offer critical insights when necessary is essential for effective cross-functional collaboration and achieving successful outcomes. 
2. Process Design and Optimization:
   • Design and optimize support processes and workflows to enhance efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction.
   • Analyze existing processes, identify bottlenecks, and implement solutions to improve the overall support experience.
   • Embed automation-first and AI-assisted thinking into process design to minimize manual handoffs and human error.
3. Ticket Management:
   • Design and optimize the ticket management system, including ticket creation, assignment, tracking, and resolution.
   • Establish protocols for prioritizing and categorizing tickets based on severity and impact, ensuring efficient handling of customer issues.
   • Implement intelligent ticket classification and prioritization using automation and AI to improve response times and workload distribution.
4. Escalation Procedures:
   • Define clear escalation paths for handling complex or critical issues.
   • Establish guidelines for escalating tickets to higher-level support teams or management, ensuring timely resolution and customer satisfaction.

1. Metrics and Performance Monitoring:
   • Establish metrics and performance indicators to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the support process.
   • Design systems for collecting and analyzing data related to response times, resolution rates, customer satisfaction, and other key performance indicators.
   • Use advanced analytics and AI insights to predict trends, forecast demand, and drive proactive operational decisions.
2. Continuous Improvement and knowledge management:
   • Drive continuous improvement initiatives by analyzing department performance reports and identifying recurring issues.
   • Propose process enhancements or system improvements and collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement changes that optimize the support workflow.
   • Ensure effective sharing and retrieval of knowledge among MSO engineers to provide prompt and accurate customer assistance.
   • Champion AI-enabled knowledge management, ensuring content is continuously improved based on usage patterns, resolution success, and customer feedback.
3. Customer Management, Collaboration and Communication:
   • Streamline communication processes to facilitate effective and timely interactions between MSO Engineers, customers and all stakeholders.
   • Customer interaction, management & satisfaction
     1. Keep the customer proactively updated on outage status, issue resolution & progress
     2. Ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction by managing customer expectations and establishing processes to enable quick issue resolution
   • Foster strong cooperation between the MSO team and other departments to facilitate effective issue resolution and knowledge sharing.
4. Profit and Loss Responsibilities

• Maintain cost-effective operations and meet gross margin goals.

Qualifications and Skills:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline) is preferred.
• Previous experience in technical support or customer support roles, with at least 5-7 years of experience in a leadership position.
• Strong understanding of support processes, methodologies, and best practices, focusing on process engineering and optimization.
• Experience in managing and mentoring MSO teams, with the ability to motivate and develop team members.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyze data, identify patterns, and drive data-informed decisions.
• Proficient in using support tools and systems, such as ticketing systems, knowledge bases, and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Proactive mindset with a passion for continuous improvement and providing exceptional customer support.

Additional Required / Strongly Preferred Skills

• Proven experience implementing automation and/or AI-driven solutions within support or operations environments.
  
  
• Strong understanding of process automation, workflow orchestration, and data-driven optimization.
  
  
• Ability to translate operational pain points into scalable automation or AI use cases with clear business impact.
  
  
• Experience working with or alongside AI-powered support tools, analytics platforms, or intelligent monitoring systems.

Good to have:

• ITIL, Lean Six Sigma Green or Black Belt, VMware Certified Professional (VCP), Certified Process Professional, Certified Process Design Engineer.
• Knowledge in telecom NOC management

Must have:

• Good knowledge of ticketing systems (e.g., Jira).
• Experience in 24/7 NOC management 
• Experience in process engineering, optimization, design, and improvement.