Programme Manager/Delivery Lead

Job Title: Technology Programme Manager / Delivery Lead
Location: London
Reports to: Director of Technology / Head of Digital Platforms

About Springer Nature :

Springer Nature opens the doors to discovery for researchers, educators, clinicians and other professionals. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals, platforms and technology solutions reach millions of people. For over 180 years our brands and imprints have been a trusted source of knowledge to these communities and today, more than ever, we see it as our responsibility to ensure that fundamental knowledge can be found, verified, understood and used by our communities – enabling them to improve outcomes, make progress, and benefit the generations that follow. Visit group.springernature.com and follow @SpringerNature / @SpringerNatureGroup

About the role:

We’re looking for a decisive and delivery-focused Delivery Lead to lead the execution of high-impact, cross-functional initiatives within our Digital Platform Team. This role is central to ensuring the scalable, secure, and resilient technology foundations that enable rapid product delivery and business growth.

You will lead the delivery of multiple concurrent programmes, manage strategic vendors (100+ personnel across two providers), mitigate delivery risks before they escalate, and align globally distributed engineering teams to deliver outcomes, not just outputs.

This is a hands-on leadership role—not for spectators or coordinators. We need someone who thrives in complexity, removes friction across teams, and is equally comfortable discussing platform architecture and managing stakeholder expectations.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery Leadership:

• Own and drive the end-to-end delivery of critical platform initiatives, ensuring commitments on scope, timeline, and budget are met.

• Define delivery strategies, orchestrate cross-team dependencies, and actively resolve delivery challenges.

• Embed delivery metrics, OKRs, and governance into every programme to track progress, surface risks, and adjust with confidence.

Team Alignment & Mentorship:

• Align and lead multiple delivery teams, fostering ownership, accountability, and delivery velocity.

• Actively coach and mentor team leads and PMs, building a high-performance delivery culture with clarity of purpose.

• Champion consistency in delivery practices and continuous improvement across squads.

Risk & Governance:

• Establish and enforce delivery governance frameworks. Identify, assess, and proactively mitigate risks and cross-team dependencies.

• Communicate risk exposure clearly and regularly to senior stakeholders - no surprises.

Vendor & Partner Management:

• Manage strategic delivery partners (100+ resources across two major vendors), ensuring contract alignment, performance transparency, and delivery accountability. Ensure transparency between all teams.

• Balance cost, quality, and velocity - negotiate effectively when delivery or quality slips.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Act as a trusted delivery advisor to technology and business leadership. Translate delivery status into business impact and technical clarity.

• Lead programme steering sessions and executive updates with confidence, clarity, and data.

Technical Oversight & Alignment:

• Ensure that platform initiatives are aligned to enterprise architecture, security, and scalability standards.

• Confidently challenge technical decisions when necessary to stay aligned on delivery outcomes.

What You Bring:

• Experience leading complex, multi-workstream technology programmes in platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, or digital delivery environments.

• Strong command of delivery governance, risk management, and cross-team coordination

• Proven experience managing multiple external vendors, delivering at enterprise scale (2+ vendors, 100+ people).

• Deep understanding of hybrid Project management and Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban) and familiarity with Lean Portfolio Management.

• Strong leadership presence: you know when to escalate, when to step in, and when to coach.

• Adept at converting architecture and engineering detail into clear, actionable insights for execs.

• Expertise in Release / delivery tracking and collaboration tools (Jira, Confluence, etc.).

Nice to Have:

• Experience in high-scale digital environments

• Familiarity with AWS, Azure, or CI/CD pipelines; container orchestration; API platforms.

• Certifications in Programme & Project Management - PMP, Agile, or equivalent.

What Success Looks Like:

• Programmes are delivered on time, within budget, and exceed stakeholder expectations.

• Teams are aligned, autonomous, and consistently delivering business value.

• Strategic risks are identified and neutralized early - no surprises.

• Vendor delivery performance is visible, accountable, and consistently high.

• Engineering output aligns with architectural direction and scales effectively with the business.

• Technology is a value add and we provide a consistent stable and optimised service.

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