Dir, Project & Programme Management

Purpose of the job

This role carries two interconnected mandates: leading all project and programme management delivery across the organisation — a team of nearly 50 people executing Gold Medal, Collinson's flagship platform migration — and fundamentally raising the standard of how project and programme management is practised across the business.

Poor PM practices has been identified as a root cause of Gold Medal's delivery shortfall. This role exists to fix that comprehensively while driving delivery execution at pace. It requires both a hands-on delivery leader capable of running a large delivery organisation and a transformation professional who can rebuild a function from the inside.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery Execution

• Lead ~50 project and programme managers executing Gold Medal across four workstreams: client migrations, product & platform, consumer registration, and billing transformation
• Hold the PM function accountable for delivery outcomes, not status reporting — drive a culture where PMs own results and escalate blockers proactively
• Ensure agile ceremonies, sprint planning, and delivery cadences are running effectively across squads; intervene where practice is poor
• Partner with the Transformation Office to ensure project-level status feeds accurately into programme governance and the Transformation Board
• Manage resource allocation across the team, balancing execution priorities with capacity and capability constraints

Methodology & Standards Improvement

• Assess current PM methodology, controls, planning standards and tooling; design and implement a measurable improvement plan
• Define a new delivery standard— covering requirements intake, detailed planning, dependency and risk management — applicable across both agile and waterfall contexts
• Strengthen agile practices across delivery teams: sprint hygiene, backlog management, velocity tracking, definition of done, and the link between sprint output and programme commitments
• Work with Technology, Product and the Transformation Office to build an integrated end-to-end delivery process, eliminating handoff gaps that have contributed to failure
• Mandate planning at the right level of detail; evaluate and introduce AI and tooling to improve delivery management capability

People & Capability

• Rapidly assess the team; make decisive decisions on retention, development, redeployment or exit without disrupting delivery continuity
• Restructure as required to align skills and seniority to Gold Medal demands; build a high-performing function with strong professional standards and a culture of ownership
• Define career development and progression frameworks; attract and retain strong delivery talent

Cross-functional Leadership

• Partner with Technology and Product leads to align PM practice to engineering and agile delivery realities
• Bring senior leaders in Product and Technology on the journey — building understanding and buy-in for new ways of working, and creating a shared ownership of delivery outcomes across functions rather than siloed accountability
• Communicate effectively at executive level — translating complex delivery realities into clear, honest narratives for C-suite and Programme Exec Owners, and influencing senior stakeholders who do not have a delivery background
• Collaborate with the Director, Transformation Office on governance and reporting standards — the PM function must be a reliable source of accurate delivery intelligence
• Provide the VP, Transformation Delivery and Programme Exec Owners with a direct and honest assessment of delivery health at all times

Knowledge, skills and experience required

• Substantial experience leading large PM functions in complex, multi-programme technology or platform transformation environments
• Proven track record of improving PM function quality — not just managing it, but raising the standard of how it operates
• Deep expertise in agile methodologies (Scrum, SAFe, Kanban or equivalent) — able to assess whether agile practice is genuinely embedded or superficially adopted, and drive meaningful improvement at team and programme level
• Strong grounding in waterfall and hybrid delivery; able to design methodology and governance that works across both
• Experience diagnosing delivery failure and implementing structural, process and people changes to recover programmes at pace
• Uncompromising on planning rigour — the difference between a real plan and a schedule, and will not accept the latter masquerading as the former
• Credibility and confidence to hold senior programme managers and stakeholders to account
• Experience managing, restructuring and developing large delivery teams through significant change
• Excellent communication — able to translate delivery complexity into clear, accurate status for senior leadership
• Proven experience managing and influencing senior and executive-level stakeholders — able to engage confidently at C-suite level, navigate competing priorities, and land difficult messages with clarity and credibility
• Programme or project management qualification (MSP, PgMP, SAFe or equivalent) desirable