Programme Delivery Excellence Director
On-siteLondon, England, United Kingdom
Job Summary
Lead risk-based, deep-dive delivery assurance reviews and targeted interventions on complex strategic programmes involving business, technology, and data-enabled transformation. Assess delivery confidence across integrated planning, dependencies, financial assumptions, architecture, engineering quality, and operational readiness. Identify emerging delivery risks, diagnose root causes, and collaborate with executive sponsors to agree practical recovery or improvement plans. Provide evidence-based assessments to Group and Divisional boards highlighting risks, trade-offs, and required actions. Track intervention effectiveness and lead firm-wide improvement initiatives using portfolio data, automation, and artificial intelligence. Commission specialist technical, architecture, and resilience reviews while aligning assurance activities with Risk, Controls, and Internal Audit to reduce duplication. Drive the evolution of delivery capabilities by enhancing Group Delivery Disciplines, learning, and knowledge sharing across investment and transformation communities.
Required Qualifications
- Substantial senior leadership track record, typically gained over 15 or more years, in complex and regulated Financial Services environments as a Programme Director, Portfolio Director, Transformation Director or equivalent
- Demonstrable accountability for delivering, assuring or recovering major multi-year programmes involving significant business, technology, data and operating-model change, including large-scale system implementations
- Experience operating across multiple business units, legal entities, geographies, technology teams, vendors and external partners in complex, multi-programme environments
- A record of providing independent challenge to executive sponsors and governance boards and influencing material investment, scope, release or delivery decisions
- Deep practical understanding of integrated programme planning, critical paths, dependency management, financial and resource management, delivery risk, testing, migration, operational readiness and benefits realisation
- Sufficient technical fluency to challenge architecture, engineering quality, cloud delivery, data, testing, resilience and control-readiness evidence, while recognising when specialist expertise is required
- Experience using delivery data, performance indicators and portfolio tooling to identify emerging risk and improve executive decision-making
- Evidence of leading enterprise-wide delivery excellence initiatives that produced measurable improvements in predictability, quality, pace, customer outcomes or resilience
- Experience leading high-performing teams and multidisciplinary reviews, including the effective commissioning and management of third-party assurance specialists
- Strong commercial and financial judgement, including capital investment governance, business cases, forecasting, benefits and delivery trade-offs
- Knowledge of product-led lifecycle management principles and experience operating in hybrid project and product environments
- Degree-level education or equivalent relevant professional experience
- Recognised professional qualification in programme or project management, such as PRINCE2 Practitioner, PMP, or PMI PgMP - or equivalent and demonstrable experience leading major, complex programmes
Desired Qualifications
- Portfolio, programme-office or assurance qualifications, such as MoP Practitioner, P3O Practitioner, or relevant risk, controls or technology-assurance credentials
- Strong practical understanding of predictive, agile and hybrid delivery approaches
- Relevant agile, scaled-agile, product-led delivery, risk, controls or technology-assurance qualifications
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