Portfolio Delivery Manager / Senior Delivery Lead Strong Technical Acumen and Engineering Background

Portfolio Delivery Manager / Senior Delivery Lead with Strong Technical Acumen and Engineering Background / £1,000 p/d Outside IR35

Purpose of the Role

• To support the VP of Engineering by owning and driving delivery across a complex digital transformation programme.

• Relieve pressure on leadership by actively solving issues, not just reporting them.

• Represent the VP in key meetings with senior stakeholders, including CTO and programme heads.

• Bring cohesion across multiple engineering teams, ensuring dependencies and risks are managed proactively.

• Ensure engineering quality, alignment, and delivery across use cases and technical pillars.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery Ownership & Coordination

• Own delivery across several cross-functional teams working on complex digital transformation.

• Ensure alignment across multiple technical teams (engineering leads per “use case”).

• Track progress, surface risks, drive resolution, and follow through on solving them.

• Produce and drive weekly and mid-sprint delivery reporting and ensure follow-up on escalated risks/issues.

Technical Awareness & Problem Solving

• Provide technical oversight (not hands-on, but with enough experience to challenge and assess).

• Identify and resolve delivery blockers, environment issues, and engineering misalignments.

• Understand the technical architecture, production readiness, CI/CD processes and performance risks.

Stakeholder Management

• Represent leadership in key meetings with credibility and command.

• Drive accountability among engineering leads without direct line management.

• Present clear, proactive summaries of delivery status, risk posture, and issue mitigation.

Process and Best Practice Leadership

• Promote best practices across engineering, dev ops, QA, architecture, and data.

• Help elevate team maturity and cross-team collaboration.

• Ensure teams are genuinely moving toward defined outcomes, not just ticking boxes.

Skills and Experience Required

Technical Background

• Solid grounding in software engineering and systems thinking.

• Able to challenge or validate technical decisions and smell potential risks (“smell BS” factor).

• Understands Microsoft ecosystem: Azure, Power Platform, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Dataverse, etc.

Programme & Delivery Experience

• Experience leading or coordinating delivery across large, multi-stream programmes.

• Strong background in delivery coordination across distributed teams, especially in engineering-heavy environments.

• Experience with risk resolution, dependency mapping, delivery reporting, and transformation metrics.

Communication & Influence

• Able to step into a room with senior leadership (e.g., CTO) and confidently tell the delivery story.

• Strong stakeholder management and interpersonal skills.

• Proactive communicator who brings solutions, not just problems.

Summary of Ideal Candidate

A senior delivery leader with a background in engineering, who can:

• Walk into high-level meetings and own the narrative

• Drive accountability and unblock complex delivery challenges

• Understand and critique technical systems and risks

• Proactively solve, not escalate, problems

• Handle a complex Microsoft-based tech stack across data, platform, and services