Portfolio Lead

Entain Group; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Regular bonus

ShareSave stake in success

Wellbeing support

Job summary

Entain Group is seeking a Portfolio Lead to drive delivery across multiple pods in our engineering, quality, and product domains from Leeds. You will blend hands-on leadership with AI-augmented approaches to improve throughput and value delivery.

You will champion AI adoption, manage cross-pod priorities, and coach pod leads. The role emphasizes capability development, data-driven decision making, and autonomous, accountable teams.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in delivery/agile roles, with cross-team leadership across technology environments.
• Strong understanding of AI tooling and its application to software delivery.
• Experience enabling multiple teams/pods at scale; capacity planning and resource optimisation.

Responsibilities

• Lead delivery performance across the sub-domain and communicate health, risks and performance to leadership.
• Coach pod leads, facilitate and resolve conflicts; ensure alignment on priorities and dependencies.
• Champion AI-augmented delivery across pods, identify opportunities to reduce toil and accelerate delivery.
• Monitor and improve delivery flow using Kanban and lean principles; surface bottlenecks and aging items.
• Evolve the agile operating model for a pod-based environment focused on pace over ceremony.
• Define and maintain delivery metrics and build dashboards for leadership visibility.
• Partner with Engineering and Product leadership at sub-domain level; communicate performance to technical/non-technical audiences.
• Forecast capacity and balance workload across pods; support hiring and resource allocation.
• Provide hands-on coaching to improve workflow management, flow thinking, estimation and data-led decision making.
• Align delivery with outcomes and value; support OKR measurement and value indicators.
• Contribute to the Centre of Excellence by sharing best practices and improvement opportunities.

Skills

Delivery leadership

AI tooling

Systems thinking

OKR knowledge

Stakeholder management

Job description

There's nothing like a career at Entain. We're a leading, global sports betting and gaming company and we're upping the excitement and increasing player safety. We're a FTSE company with iconic brands including Ladbrokes, Coral, BetMGM, Eurobet and bwin, and we have an energy that drives us to perform at the height of our potential. Whether you're an engineer, marketer or retail specialist, a career here is a complete game changer.

Job Description

The Portfolio Lead is accountable for delivery performance across a sub-domain of 4-6 pods (Engineering, Quality, Product). They lead the flow of value from idea to production, ensuring pods deliver with pace, predictability and understanding to outcomes.

They combine hands‑on delivery leadership with AI‑augmented ways of working and data‑driven decision‑making. They do not prescribe a single framework - instead they adapt approaches that best serve each pod's context.

They partner with Engineering and Product leadership to reduce waste, improve throughput and help pods achieve Autonomy, Accountability and Agreement to value outcomes.

What you will do

Pod Performance & Accountability

You are responsible for pod delivery performance across the sub-domain.

You will lead and communicate delivery health, risks and performance to leadership

Support pod leads with coaching, facilitation and conflict resolution

Ensure cross-pod agreement on priorities, dependencies and shared goals

Facilitate communication and collaboration between pods to promote knowledge sharing

Problem Solving

You will be an expert; deploy root cause analysis, systems thinking and structured techniques to analyse and guide out resolutions.

Be an escalation point for cross-pod blockers and systemic impediments

Identify patterns across pods that indicate deeper organisational or process issues

AI-Augmented Delivery

Champion AI agent adoption across pods - including coding agents, test generation, story creation, board health and deployment automation

Identify opportunities where AI can reduce toil, accelerate delivery or improve decision-making

Apply AI to improve delivery effectiveness, including workflow insights, risk prediction, and automation of reporting

Track and demonstrate the impact of AI on delivery performance

Flow & Efficiency

Monitor and improve delivery flow (lead time, cycle time, WIP, throughput) using Kanban and lean principles

Ensure WIP limits are respected and surface ageing items through Board Walks

Identify bottlenecks, ageing work and sources of delay across pods.

Improve through regular assessment and experimentation.

Support teams in breaking down work into deliverable, value-driven increments

Agile Ways of Working

Support and evolve the agile operating model for a pod-based environment focused on pace, not ceremony.

Adapt delivery approaches (Kanban, flow‑based, lean) appropriate to each pod's needs

Ensure consistency of practice across pods without being prescriptive

Guide teams to operate with autonomy and accountability

Metrics & Reporting

Define and maintain delivery metrics: cycle time, flow efficiency, lead time of initiative, PDLC compression, dependency reduction, rework rate, team satisfaction, and AI effectiveness

Build dashboards (cumulative flow diagrams, throughput charts, WIP ageing) that provide leadership visibility and lead informed decision‑making

Analyse performance data to identify trends, patterns and areas for improvement

Use data to facilitate conversations and coach pods — not just track output

Stakeholder Management

Partner with Engineering and Product leadership at sub‑domain level

Represent delivery health and risks in leadership forums

Build trusted relationships that allow fast decision‑making

Communicate delivery performance to both technical and non‑technical audiences

Understand the commercial context of the sub‑domain

Connect delivery decisions to revenue, cost, and customer impact

Support prioritisation trade‑offs with a business lens

Capacity Planning

Forecast capacity across pods based on team composition, skills mix and upcoming demand

Identify resourcing gaps and support hiring/allocation decisions

Balance workload across pods to prevent burnout and underutilisation

Support realistic planning by ensuring pods have clear understanding of available capacity

Manage risks through regular assessment and execution of controls

Ensure cross-pod dependencies are visible, tracked and managed

Track dependency cost (time blocked, items affected) and lead mitigations such as contract‑first development and feature flags

Support issue escalations, ensuring intervention by the dependency escalation protocol

Coach & Capability Development

Provide hands‑on coaching at pod level

Build capability in workflow management, flow thinking, estimation, planning, and data‑led decision‑making

Support teams in understanding and improving their own performance

Strengthen a culture of continuous improvement and learning

Outcome & Value Focus

Align delivery to always ensure outcomes and value.

Help teams understand the why behind their work and how their outputs contribute to value

Challenge work that does not link to outcomes

Support measurement of delivery against OKRs and value indicators

Centre of Excellence (CoE) Contribution

Be an active contributor to the CoE

Share best practices, delivery insights and improvement opportunities from pods

Support adoption of standards, playbooks and tools

Help evolve delivery practices based on experience

Qualifications

Specialist Experience

You will have 7+ years in delivery/agile roles, with at least 3 years operating across multiple teams simultaneously in a technology environment

Expert in flow‑based delivery approaches (Kanban, lean, continuous delivery) — not limited to Scrum

Experience enabling multiple teams/pods simultaneously at scale

Strong understanding of AI tooling and its application to software delivery (coding assistants, automation, intelligent analytics)

Experienced in capacity planning, demand forecasting and resource optimisation across multiple teams

Use data to solve complex problems; can interpret and communicate complex data sets clearly

Previous experience of organisational transformation and change management

Good knowledge of Objectives and Key Results (OKR) strategy

Experience in a regulated industry (gaming, fintech, or similar) desirable

You will embody the Maker Dimensions - selecting for capability, not just competence. We are looking for people who are versatile, curious, and able to operate with autonomy in a high‑trust environment.

AI Fluency uses AI tooling; experiments; iterate with AI as a collaborator

Agency & Accountability Owns outcomes, not just tasks; directs itself.

Systems Thinking Sees patterns across pods and addresses causes, not symptoms

Stakeholder Engagement Builds working relationships across pods and leadership

Improve Performance Raises the bar through data and experimentation

Cross-functional Versatility Comfortable operating beyond their primary discipline

Product Sense Connects their work to customer and outcomes

Build Capability Invests in developing pods, individuals and self

Additional Information

At Entain, we know that signing top players requires a great starting package, and plenty of support to inspire peak performance. Join us, and a competitive salary is just the beginning.

Depending on your role and location, you can expect to receive benefits like

• A regular bonus
• A stake in our success through our ShareSave scheme
• Wellbeing support, and so much more.

And outside of this, you'll have the chance to turn recognition from leaders and colleagues into amazing prizes, join a winning team of talented people and be a part of an inclusive and supporting community where everyone is celebrated for being themselves.