Incident Manager

About Data & Technology Solutions

WPP's Data & Technology Solutions is WPP's unified global data products and technology team. We work with our agencies and clients to build data driven solutions and technology products to power marketing transformation.

WPP Open is our AI platform for marketing; it connects marketing professionals, data, tools, and AI in a single place. WPP Open is the simplest, safest, and fastest way to realize the benefits of scaled AI delivering better informed creative ideas faster, at scale, and at lower cost.

We're endlessly curious, and our team of thinkers, builders, creators, and problem solvers are over 2,000 strong, across 20 markets around the world.

Role Purpose

As Incident Manager for the WPP Open Platform, you will own the end to end incident management lifecycle from detection through resolution to post incident review   ensuring platform stability, SLA compliance, and transparent communication across all stakeholders.

This is not a traditional incident management role. You will be expected to design, build, and continuously improve automated incident management workflows that connect our toolchain   Jira, Confluence, Statuspage, Intercom, Zendesk, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and WhatsApp   into a seamless, intelligent, and low friction incident response system.

You will serve as the central coordination point for all P1 and P2 incidents, driving rapid resolution, clear stakeholder communication, and proactive prevention. You will work closely with L1/L2 Support Engineers, the Team Lead, Platform Engineering, and Product teams to ensure WPP Open delivers a reliable, world class experience to our global agency users.

Incident Ownership & Response

• Own the full incident lifecycle for all P1 and P2 incidents: detection, triage, escalation, coordination, resolution, and closure
• Serve as the primary war room coordinator during major incidents, driving cross functional teams toward rapid resolution
• Ensure timely and accurate stakeholder communication at every stage of an incident
• Maintain a clear audit trail of all actions, decisions, and communications throughout each incident
• Enforce and continuously improve escalation matrices, response time targets, and SLA commitments
• Perform post incident reviews and drive root cause analysis (RCA) with actionable preventive measures
• Track and report on incident metrics, SLA performance, MTTR, MTTD, and repeat incident trends

Incident Automation & Toolchain Integration

• Design and implement automated incident workflows across the full toolchain: Jira, Confluence, Statuspage, Intercom, Zendesk, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and WhatsApp
• Build and maintain ChatOps workflows in Slack and Teams   automating incident channel creation, responder assignment, status updates, and escalation triggers
• Automate Statuspage updates based on monitoring alerts and incident severity thresholds, ensuring real time public facing status communication with zero manual delay
• Configure Jira automation rules for incident ticket creation, priority routing, SLA timers, escalation triggers, and post incident task generation
• Automate customer facing communication through Intercom and Zendesk   including incident acknowledgement messages, progress updates, and resolution notifications
• Build WhatsApp and Teams notification workflows for executive and stakeholder briefings during critical incidents
• Maintain and improve Confluence automation for RCA templates, incident documentation, and runbook generation triggered by incident closure
• Integrate monitoring and alerting tools (Datadog, Statuspage, PagerDuty) with the communication stack to ensure zero gap detection to notification flows
• Continuously evaluate and improve automation coverage   reducing manual steps, improving response speed, and ensuring consistency across all incident communication channels

Process & Knowledge Management

• Develop, maintain, and enforce incident management playbooks, runbooks, and escalation procedures
• Build and maintain a centralized incident knowledge base in Confluence   ensuring learnings from every major incident are captured and actioned
• Define and own the post incident review process   including templates, timelines, and accountability tracking for preventive actions
• Identify recurring incident patterns and work proactively with engineering teams to eliminate root causes
• Drive continuous improvement of incident detection, response, and communication processes

Stakeholder Communication & Reporting

• Own all incident communications   internal (engineering, product, leadership) and external (agency users via Intercom/Zendesk/Statuspage)
• Produce regular incident reports, trend analyses, and SLA performance summaries for leadership and stakeholders
• Present post incident reviews and improvement plans to the Support Manager and Platform leadership
• Maintain stakeholder notification lists and communication templates across all channels

Collaboration

• Work closely with L1/L2 Support Engineers and the Team Lead to ensure smooth ticket triage, escalation, and handover during incidents
• Partner with DevOps and Platform Engineering to improve platform observability, alerting quality, and deployment safety
• Collaborate with Product teams to communicate platform stability status and incident impact on feature delivery

Skill Requirements

Essential Skills

Incident Management:

• Minimum 3+ years of hands on incident management experience in an enterprise SaaS or digital platform environment
• Proven experience owning P1/P2 incident response end to end   coordination, communication, escalation, and resolution
• Deep understanding of ITIL Incident, Problem, and Change Management frameworks
• Demonstrated experience in writing and maintaining incident runbooks, playbooks, and post incident reviews
• Strong ability to manage multiple concurrent incidents calmly and effectively under pressure

Automation & Toolchain:

• Jira / Jira Service Management: Advanced experience   automation rules, workflow configuration, SLA management, dashboard creation
• Confluence: Automation templates, structured documentation, RCA frameworks, space management
• Statuspage: Configuring and automating incident pages, component management, subscriber notifications, API driven updates
• Slack: Building incident workflows, channel automation, bot integration, ChatOps implementation
• Microsoft Teams: Automated notifications, incident bridge coordination, webhook integrations
• Intercom: Automated customer messaging, incident broadcast campaigns, user segmentation for notifications
• Zendesk: Ticket automation, trigger configuration, macro management, SLA rules
• WhatsApp Business API or equivalent: Automated stakeholder notification workflows (desirable)
• Experience integrating monitoring tools (Datadog, PagerDuty, or similar) with communication platforms via webhooks, APIs, or native integrations

Communication & Soft Skills:

• Exceptional written and verbal communication   ability to deliver clear, concise updates to both technical and non technical audiences simultaneously
• Proven ability to remain composed and authoritative under pressure during major incidents
• Strong stakeholder management skills   comfortable presenting to senior leadership during and after incidents
• Ability to write structured, jargon free incident communications for agency/end users

Desirable Skills

• ITIL Foundation or higher certification
• Familiarity with Datadog or similar APM tools for monitoring to incident integration
• Knowledge of SLO/SLI/Error Budget frameworks
• Experience building incident management programs from scratch in a fast scaling platform environment

Behaviours

You're open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures for our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with confidence: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: We are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we deliver extraordinary every day.