Service Delivery Team Leader

As Service Delivery Team Leader, you’ll be a key member of the P2P Management team, leading and developing a high-performing Service Delivery function.
You’ll be responsible for ensuring the timely, accurate, and compliant processing of requisitions, purchase orders, and invoices, while driving performance and maintaining high standards across all activities.

This role is central to delivering operational excellence—ensuring processes are followed, business expectations are met, and continuous improvement is embedded across the team.

What you’ll be doing as a Service Delivery Team Leader

- Lead, manage and support the Service Delivery Team to achieve KPIs, SLAs and regulatory requirements
- Provide strong day-to-day leadership, driving accountability, clear decision-making and team engagement
- Manage performance to ensure delivery against individual and team targets
- Motivate, coach and develop team members to build capability and self-sufficiency
- Improve processing times and reduce internal and external query volumes
- Build and maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders
- Identify root causes of P2P issues and deliver effective corrective and preventative actions
- Provide proactive support to resolve queries and ensure smooth transaction processing
- Lead or contribute to ad-hoc projects requiring P2P expertise
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives using data and analysis to add measurable value
- Ensure compliance with policies, procedures, controls and regulatory requirements, managing risk effectively
- Facilitate effective communication, meetings and workshops, including engagement with customers and suppliers

Base location – Hybrid – Clear Water Court Reading
This is a 12 – 18 months Fixed Term Contract (Maternity Leave cover)

What you should bring to the role
The essential criteria to help you succeed in this role is:

- Confident working in SAP, particularly the ECC and SRM Supply Chain and Finance modules
- Able to show determination and resilience, with the confidence to work effectively in a busy and fast changing environment and work to deadlines.
- Demonstrates strong intellectual curiosity and proactively seek to understand processes, systems, and root causes.
- Good communication skills to support and where necessary influence others across to deliver the best process solution for Thames with the ability to translate technical system issues to non-specialists.
- Confident using Microsoft Excel to manage and analyse data, and PowerPoint to present findings in a structured and engaging way.
- Experience working with compliance frameworks and internal controls.

Desirable skills:

- Awareness of invoice automation and scanning including OCR, data validation and matching.
- Ariba and Fieldglass experience, particularly submitting invoices through the SAP business network.
- CIPS qualification.

What’s in it for you?

- Competitive salary of up to £55,000 per annum depending on experience
- Annual Leave - 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with the length of service (plus bank holidays)
- Performance-related pay plan directly linked to company performance measures and targets
- Generous Pension Scheme through AON
- Access to lots of benefits to help you take care of you and your family’s health and wellbeing, and your finances – from annual health MOTs and access to physiotherapy and counselling, to Cycle to Work schemes, shopping vouchers and life assurance.

Find out more about our benefits and perks (Please note different T&Cs apply if on secondment)

Who are we?
We’re the UK’s largest water and wastewater company, with more than 16 million customers relying on us every day to supply water for their taps and toilets. We want to build a better future for all, helping our customers, communities, people, and the planet to thrive. It’s a big job and we’ve got a long way to go, so we need help from passionate and skilled people, committed to making a difference and getting us to where we want to be in the years and decades to come.

Learn more about our purpose and values

Working at Thames Water
Thames Water is a unique, rewarding, and diverse place to work, where every day you can make a difference, yet no day is the same. As part of our family, you’ll enjoy meaningful career opportunities, flexible working arrangements and excellent benefits.

If you’re looking for a sustainable and successful career where you can make a daily difference to millions of people’s lives while helping to protect the world of water for future generations, we’ll be here to support you every step of the way. Together, we can build a better future for our customers, our region, and our planet.

Real purpose, real support, real opportunities. Come and join the Thames Water family. Why choose us? Learn more.

We’re committed to being a great, diverse, and inclusive place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and want to ensure you feel supported throughout the recruitment process. If you need any adjustments, whether that’s extra time, accessible formats, or anything else just let us know, we’re here to help and support.

When a crisis happens, we all rally around to support our customers. As part of Team Thames, you’ll have the opportunity to sign up to support our customers on the frontline as an ambassador. Full training will be given for what is undoubtedly an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about our business and meet colleagues.

Disclaimer: due to the high volume of applications we receive, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme

Disability Confident

About Disability Confident

A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident .