Project Manager

Instagram; Burnhope; Hybrid; GBP 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

27 days annual leave rising to 32

LGPS pension

Hybrid working

Job summary

The Council is seeking a Project Manager to consolidate a broad digital services programme and move multiple systems to modern SaaS, PaaS, and supplier-hosted services. You will map dependencies, ownership and timelines, coordinating architects, suppliers and internal teams to keep delivery on track.

You should be comfortable balancing competing priorities, translating technical detail into clear business decisions and guiding governance and change management across a large organisation.

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent in a related discipline.
• Experience managing multiple complex projects and delivering significant organisational or technology change.
• Strong project management skills including planning, governance, risk and issue management, financial management and benefits realisation.

Responsibilities

• Turn the portfolio of migrations and system changes into a deliverable plan with clear sequencing and ownership.
• Coordinate technical teams, suppliers and internal colleagues to manage dependencies, budgets and decisions.
• Provide senior colleagues with actionable progress updates, surfacing risks early and guiding decision making.
• Manage testing, cutover, service readiness and transition into business as usual to minimise service disruption.

Skills

Project management

Planning

Governance

Risk management

Budgeting

Change management

Stakeholder management

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

Moving systems to the cloud is rarely just a technology problem. Contracts expire at different times, suppliers have their own roadmaps, services have competing priorities, technical dependencies surface late and decisions in one area can hold up several others.

We're looking for a Project Manager who can bring that complexity under control.

WHAT IS INVOLVED?

Digital Services is delivering a significant programme to reduce the Council's reliance on legacy infrastructure and move suitable systems to modern SaaS, PaaS and supplier-hosted services. The work spans third-party applications, internally developed systems and wider infrastructure dependencies, so you won't be managing a single implementation with a neat start and finish.

Your job will be to turn that portfolio into a deliverable plan.

You'll bring together technical teams, service owners, suppliers, Finance, Procurement, Information Governance and other colleagues to establish what needs to happen, in what order, by whom and by when. You'll manage dependencies, risks, issues, budgets and decisions, and make sure problems are surfaced early enough for the right people to act on them.

Some migrations will be relatively straightforward. Others may involve procurement, contract changes, data migration, redesign, archive decisions or difficult choices about whether a system should be retained at all. You'll help make those routes clear and keep work moving where responsibilities cross organisational boundaries.

You'll provide senior colleagues with a clear view of progress and where intervention or decisions are needed. That means more than producing status reports. You'll need to understand what is really happening across the programme, challenge weak plans or unclear ownership and turn technical and commercial detail into useful decisions.

You'll also coordinate testing, cutover, service readiness and transition into business as usual, helping us make significant changes without losing sight of the services that depend on the technology.

You don't need to be highly technical. Architects and technical specialists will own the technical designs and engineering decisions. We're looking for someone who can work confidently with those specialists, understand the implications of their work and create the delivery environment in which it can succeed.

You will need to be educated to degree level or equivalent in related discipline and have experience of managing multiple complex projects and delivering significant organisational or technology change.

You'll be comfortable taking responsibility for work where there are competing priorities, incomplete information and dependencies between different teams and organisations. You should be able to establish structure quickly, work out where delivery is genuinely blocked and keep people focused on the decisions and actions that will move things forward.

You need strong project management skills, including planning, governance, risk and issue management, financial management, change management and benefits realisation.

You also need strong communication and influencing skills. You'll be working with senior managers, service teams, technical specialists and external suppliers, and will sometimes need to reconcile different priorities or challenge assumptions while maintaining productive working relationships.

We're looking for someone who can take complex information, understand what matters and present it clearly. You should be comfortable moving between detailed delivery discussions and concise reporting or recommendations for senior colleagues.

Experience of delivering complex digital or ICT projects, including working with suppliers and procurement, would be advantageous. Experience of cloud migration, hosting transformation or similar technology modernisation would also be useful, although specialist cloud knowledge is not required.

We offer a competitive rewards package that includes attractive salaries, a generous annual leave entitlement of 27 days (rising to 32 after five years' continuous local government service), membership of the excellent contributory career average Local Government Pension Scheme, and a range of flexible working arrangements including hybrid working (home and office) where applicable. Explore the full range of rewards and benefits on our website.