ITSM Practice Lead

The Role:ITSM Practice Lead - Configuration Management (CMDB)

We are seeking an expert ITSM Practice Lead and strategist to join our Service Management Office (SMO) team responsible for the Corporate Engineering Org's ITSM practices. As a critical step of our transition into an AI-native enterprise, your mandate will be to evolve our Configuration Management and CMDB processes into a high-integrity, and high velocity, framework of class-leading service management practice. 

In this role, you will develop leading-edge processes that establish a "single source of truth" for all service assets, leveraging your service management expertise to enhance data quality and drive automation that serves our AI transformation objective. 

Your core responsibility is to institute a robust service management framework of process standards that ensures the continuous accuracy of Configuration Items (CIs) and their intricate interdependencies, providing the essential structure needed to safeguard service stability. By establishing strategic guardrails, compliance frameworks (including SOX/SOC2), and AI-ready validation practices, you will empower our elite technical teams to maintain high-fidelity data, eliminating friction across the ITSM landscape and ensuring high observability, through common practice, into complex service relationships. 

Key Responsibilities: 

Enterprise Configuration Management Governance: Serve as the principal Practice Lead of Configuration Management Practices for the SMO, architecting and leading a professionalized governance function that defines the strategic practices of how the enterprise identifies and manages its technical estate. Define the process guardrails that ensure compliance standards and business velocity are both built into the fabric of the Configuration Management practice. Document and maintain the standards, guardrails and procedures, including a glide path, to ensure our IT Service Management processes follow a ‘well lit path’ for consistency, efficiency and service quality. 

CMDB Practice Design: As the primary design and governance lead of these practices, you will be accountable for designing the processes that enables the organization to consistently apply standards that, capable of overseeing complex service relationships across our ServiceNow platform. 

Cross-Process Integration: Integrate Configuration Management practices with Incident, Problem, and Change Enablement to minimize risk and service degradation across the IT value stream. 

Cross-Functional Integration: Establish strategic partnerships with all stakeholders to ensure good CMDB practices are adopted to enable a unified source of truth for diverse enterprise needs.

AI-Native Data Strategy: Support the transition to an AI-native enterprise by defining automated validation and reconciliation practices that leverage AI opportunities where possible, utilising existing tools and capabilities alongside ServiceNow to accelerate data maturity and eliminate manual processes. 

Practice Leadership: Serve as the strategic Practice Lead for Configuration Management (CMDB) within the SMO, contributing to the unified vision for the full suite of ITSM practices, and driving CMDB standards as an essential guardrail for AI Transformation. 

Outcome-Based Governance: Manage effectiveness of CMDB practices through value-based KPIs such as Data Accuracy and Reconciliation success, ensuring that our technology investments are directly contributing to business value streams. 

CMDB Stakeholder Alignment: Systematically identify and prioritize key SMO stakeholders to foster collaboration and secure buy-in for Configuration Management standards across the enterprise. 

CMDB-Enabled Service Vision: Lead the creation of a unified service vision by ensuring Configuration Management standards are integrated into, and act as a foundational element of, the overall SMO strategy. 

Stakeholder Management: Serve as the primary point of contact for the broad ITSM practice standard, engaging cross functionally with key stakeholders across GTE and beyond. Own the resolution of process friction that prevents teams from adopting and applying the practices to their internal processes. Define the readiness criteria and governance for execution, in partnership with enablement and execution teams such as SPICE and SET. 

ServiceNow CoE Alignment: Ensure all Configuration Management and CMDB practices are aligned with the ServiceNow Center of Excellence (CoE) strategy, supporting the CoE mission to define and deliver services that strategically enable, scale, and govern Enterprise Service Management across Google. Partner with the CoE to integrate architectural standards and agentic strategies into the SMO framework. 

Community of Practice Development: Develop a “formal” Community of Practice across the stakeholder organizations to act as champions. Forge the collaboration to drive adoption and knowledge sharing, ensuring the standard is propagated organically rather than through enforcement. 

Platform Advocacy: Advocate for "Out of the Box" platform alignment within ServiceNow, favoring configuration over customization to enable AI-native practices that facilitate high-velocity automation. 

External Benchmarking and Best Practice Adoption: To continuously benchmark against industry leaders (outside of Google) and integrate external service delivery trends to ensure the practice remains leading-edge and forward-looking. 

Audit & Compliance: Ensure the practices comply with all regulatory and compliance frameworks as necessary (e.g., SOX, GDPR, etc.) and that it provides technical integrity for audit audiences.

Talent Development: Mentor the next generation of ITSM Practitioners, establishing clear principles for configuration management stewardship centered on quality, velocity, and AI-enabled enterprise operations. 

Essential Skills & Qualifications 

Minimum Qualifications 

• 10+ years of proven transformative leadership in large-scale technology organizations, with the skill and profile to drive strategic, enterprise-level Service Management transformation.

• 8+ years of experience in ITSM leadership focused on implementing and governing ITSM Configuration and IT Asset Management practices in very large scale enterprises

• 5+ years of experience with the ServiceNow platform,specifically Configuration Management (CMDB), Common Service Data Model (CSDM) and IT Asset Management 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Exceptional Communication skills. The candidate must have the ability to comprehensively convey and implement a complex IT CMDB governance practice vision across a fast-moving matrix organization 

• Service Management Mastery: Expert-level command of one or more ITSM frameworks, applied strategically to a modern business context. 

• Advanced Certification: Likely holds ITIL Managing Professional (MP) or ITIL Strategic Leader (SL) certifications or a current equivalent. 

• AI-Native Vision & Strategy: Experience architecting AI-native service transformations that move beyond traditional models toward flexible, high-velocity practices. 

• ServiceNow Architect-Level Insight: Deep familiarity with ServiceNow’s Configuration Management capabilities and processes, advocating for CMDB and CSDM alignment practices and standards that favors configuration over customization. 

• Technical Fluency: Ability to translate ITSM practices into Agile, DevOps and SRE vernacular, ensuring the SMO is accessible, and clearly factors Engineering and Operational velocity into its practices. 

• A proven ability to convert technical data into compelling, value-driven business narratives for executive and audit audiences. 

• Governance Sophistication: Proven capability to manage large-scale service functions in a complex matrix organization while maintaining a strong focus on individual experience and business value.