Programme Manager

Department: IT & Change

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Manchester, UK

Description

We are seeking a highly organized, outcome-driven Program Manager (PM) to play a foundational role in our newly formed Data group. This role requires program leadership, operating discipline, stakeholder management, and a strong understanding of data delivery in a complex, fast-paced environment. The PM will translate business demand into clear plans, align deliverables to business priorities, and keep cross-functional teams aligned, focused, and moving at pace.

Working closely with Data Stewards, Data Quality, Data Architecture, and Data Engineering, the PM will help move data products through the "data machine" with predictability, transparency, and speed. This is a hands-on, high-impact role for a technical PM who thrives in ambiguity, creates order from complexity, and is excited to help shape a new operating model and delivery cadence from the ground up.

About the role

• Own the data program plan: roadmap, milestones, dependencies, risks, and delivery cadence
• Partner with the Head of Data to translate business priorities and Consumer demand into an actionable book of work
• Drive prioritization across roughly twenty-five platforms and 100-125 data products, balancing value, readiness, complexity, and capacity
• Coordinate platform Suppliers, Data Stewards, Data Quality, Data Architecture, and Data Engineering to onboard data products through the 'data machine'
• Monitor progress, SLAs, and blockers, driving issue resolution and escalations to keep delivery on track
• Build governance, reporting, and executive communications covering outcomes, resources, budget, and performance
• Improve the operating model by increasing throughput, compressing cycle time, and scaling delivery

About you

• Proven experience managing complex programs or transformation initiatives, ideally within data, technology, financial services, or platform operations
• Strong program management discipline: planning, controls, governance, RAID, dependency management, and SteerCo-level reporting
• Skilled at translating business priorities into delivery plans across consumer, supplier, and technology teams
• Able to coordinate multiple stakeholders and delivery functions in a matrixed environment
• Working understanding of data lifecycle concepts: onboarding, cataloging, quality, stewardship, pipelines, and standards; sufficient to coordinate technical teams effectively
• Commercially minded, comfortable balancing value, risk, urgency, capacity, and delivery trade-offs
• Resourceful self-starter with strong ownership, communication, and stakeholder management skills
• Comfortable operating amid ambiguity and helping stand up a new function from the ground up