IT Change Analyst

About Withers

A law firm focused on people, performance, and collaboration.

For the past 130 years, we have supported some of the world’s most remarkable people and organizations at defining moments in their lives. 40% of our business comes from Europe, 40% from the US and 20% from Asia and we are one profit sharing partnership globally.

We are united in our commitment to integrity, quality and collaboration. We have a culture of high performance and deliver excellent service consistently across the firm. We provide tailored solutions built on trust and partner with our clients to achieve their goals.

Many of our clients are shaping the future and creating solutions to tackle some of the world’s most difficult problems. It makes for a fascinating and challenging practice.

Our role is to get to know each individual client, find out where they want to be, and help them to get there – whether they are building a business, buying a home or protecting and defending their interests.

To meet their unique needs we are exceptionally collaborative, working together across teams and time zones. And we are agile – focusing on strategy rather than rigid ideas and traditional hierarchy.

Join us to be part of a team that is always looking to the future. Where initiative, big ideas and bold moves are always encouraged. Where you can truly be yourself.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for a highly motivated and proactive IT Change Analyst who can help the firm deliver technology change safely, efficiently and with clear business outcomes. Working alongside the IT Change and Release Manager, the role will coordinate and improve the controls, governance and communication that support change across an increasingly integrated cloud, SaaS and enterprise technology landscape.

The role will support the end-to-end IT change management lifecycle, including reviewing requests for change, facilitating the weekly Change Advisory Board (CAB), coordinating emergency changes, maintaining the forward schedule of change and supporting release activity. It will ensure changes are appropriately assessed for business impact, technical dependencies, security, testing, communications, implementation and rollback, while applying proportionate governance in line with ITIL 4 principles.

The successful candidate will work closely with senior IT leaders, project managers, architecture, infrastructure, applications, development, testing, security, service delivery, business services teams and third-party vendors. They must be able to understand the wider technology landscape, identify dependencies and risk, ask the right questions and bring stakeholders together to support practical, well-controlled outcomes.

The ideal candidate will demonstrate excellent written and verbal communication, strong organisation and attention to detail, and the confidence to provide constructive challenge where a proposed change is not sufficiently understood or controlled. They will work independently while remaining a collaborative team member, with curiosity, professionalism, sound judgement and a practical 'can-do' attitude.

The role is based in the London office and sits within the Global Systems group, which is responsible for supporting and implementing the firm's technology across all regions. The successful candidate will join the Change and Release team and work across the wider Systems functions, including Infrastructure, Applications, Development, Solution Architecture and Testing.

Experience in a medium to large, multi-site professional services environment is preferred, together with an understanding of the operational expectations and technology landscape of a legal or similarly regulated organisation.

The priority for all change activity is to protect service stability, security and user experience while enabling the firm to deliver improvements at the pace the business requires.

Areas of focus and responsibilities

• Coordinate and chair CAB and eCAB meetings as required, ensuring decisions, actions, approvals and exceptions are clearly recorded and communicated.
• Review requests for change for quality, completeness and proportionate governance, including business impact, dependencies, security, testing, communications, implementation, validation and rollback arrangements.
• Provide practical guidance and constructive challenge to change owners and approvers so that risks, conflicts, resource requirements and business impacts are understood before approval.
• Maintain and communicate the forward schedule of change, identifying collisions, dependencies, blackout periods and capacity constraints across projects, releases and operational activity.
• Support the coordination, planning and governance of higher-risk changes, working with technical, project and business teams from initiation through to successful completion.
• Partner with technical and business services teams to embed consistent change practices and encourage proportionate, risk-based compliance rather than process for its own sake.
• Support the continued development and adoption of change within Halo and other relevant service management tooling, including workflow, reporting and automation opportunities.
• Monitor change outcomes and complete post-implementation reviews where required, ensuring failed or problematic changes result in clear learning, ownership and follow-up actions.
• Work with Major Incident and Problem Management processes to identify change-related disruption, maintain accurate records and support root-cause and lessons-learned activity.
• Develop and maintain meaningful metrics and reporting covering change quality, success, risk, timeliness, emergency activity, failed changes and recurring themes, using insight to recommend service improvements.
• Maintain clear process documentation, guidance and knowledge articles, and help ensure change responsibilities are understood across teams and regions.
• Support regular audits and control reviews, providing evidence that the change process is operating effectively and in line with firm policies, regulatory obligations and security standards.
• Provide administrative and analytical support to the IT Change and Release Manager and contribute to wider service improvement initiatives as required.

This list of duties and responsibilities is not exhaustive.  It is intended to describe the general content of, and requirements for the performance of this job, and as such, the role may also include the undertaking of additional tasks as required.

Skills and experience required

• Relevant experience in change, release, service delivery, project coordination or IT service management within a medium to large organisation.
• Good working knowledge of ITIL 4 change enablement and related incident, problem, release and service configuration practices; ITIL Foundation certification is desirable.
• Experience of working with ITSM platforms and structured workflows; experience of Halo or a comparable service management tool would be advantageous.
• Experience reviewing or coordinating technology change across applications, infrastructure, cloud and SaaS services, with the ability to understand dependencies without needing to be the technical specialist in every area.
• A practical understanding of modern enterprise technology, including Microsoft 365, Azure, identity and access management, endpoints, integrations, data flows and vendor-managed platforms.
• Good awareness of security, data protection, resilience, patching and compliance considerations relevant to technology change.
• An understanding of legal and business application categories such as document management, practice management, CRM, document production and related integrated services is desirable.
• Experience developing or improving policies, processes, controls and guidance, with an ability to balance governance, risk and delivery pace.
• Strong analytical skills and confidence using service data, reporting and Microsoft 365 tools to identify trends, communicate performance and support better decisions.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, including the confidence to facilitate meetings, challenge constructively and work with senior leaders, technical teams, business stakeholders and third parties.
• Strong organisation, attention to detail and judgement, with the ability to prioritise competing activity, meet deadlines and remain effective under pressure.
• A recognised professional qualification or relevant degree is welcomed but is not essential where equivalent practical experience can be demonstrated.

The essentials

• 9.30am to 5.30pm but flexibility is a must
• Hybrid working policy with a minimum of 2 days per week worked in the office
• 12 weeks' probation period
• 12 weeks’ notice period.
• Flexible benefit package including pension, private medical insurance, Denplan, season ticket loan, discounted gym memberships, lifestyle discount scheme, the ability to buy and sell holidays, flu jabs, doctors consultation service, cycle to work scheme, on-site café and more.

Information for Recruitment Agencies

Withers endeavours to recruit and fill vacancies directly. However, when we do need to engage with agencies, Withers operates a preferred supplier list and will not be accepting unsolicited applications from non-PSL agencies for this role.

Equal Opportunities Employment Statement 

It is the policy of Withers to provide equal opportunities for all employees in relation to recruitment, training and promotion.  Decisions in these areas will be made only by reference to the requirements of the job and shall not be influenced by any consideration of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race (including colour, nationality and ethnic and national origin), religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.