Senior Project Manager

Automation Consultants Ltd; Reading; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 68,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

33 days holiday

Private healthcare

Pension scheme

Onsite gym & showers

Training budget

Job summary

Automation Consultants Ltd in Reading seeks an experienced Senior Project Manager to oversee delivery across consultancy portfolios, ensuring value-driven outcomes within time and budget. You will lead cross-functional teams, drive agile practices, and deploy AI-driven dashboards to monitor program health and velocity.

The role requires strong leadership, exceptional communication, budgeting acumen, and a proven track record delivering complex projects on schedule.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical or business field, or equivalent experience.
• 7.5+ years working as a project manager in teams.
• Proven ability to deliver complex projects on time and on budget.
• Excellent writing, communication and interpersonal skills.
• Aptitude for problem solving.
• Knowledge of PMO skills and PMO collaboration experience.
• Solid understanding of Agile (Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP) in hybrid environments.

Responsibilities

• Client & Delivery Alignment: steer high-value outcomes across AC's consulting portfolio.
• Expectation & Roadmap Management: lead story-mapping, sprint planning, and roadmap workshops.
• Risk & Impediment Resolution: identify blockers and manage risks with governance of value-stream metrics.
• Automated Stakeholder Reporting: deploy AI-driven dashboards for real-time program health updates.
• Escalation Path Governance: manage escalation, scope, and change control with lean governance.
• Commercial Strategy & Growth: identify value opportunities with Consultancy leadership and Sales.
• Agentic AI & Workflow Automation: implement autonomous AI agents to streamline reporting.
• Agile Coaching & Enablement: train teams in Scrum, Kanban, Lean for high-performance delivery.

Skills

Project management

Client & delivery alignment

Roadmap planning

Agile methods

Budgeting & finance

Stakeholder communication

PMO knowledge

Problem solving

Escalation & governance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in technical or business field

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Atlassian Stack

Job description

Your mission

The Role

Reporting to the Head of Consultancy, this role is to provide strategic project management expertise to oversee the execution of our consultancy portfolios and delivery projects. You will ensure continuous, value-driven delivery through iterative frameworks, optimizing flow and aligning cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality strategic outcomes within target timeframes and on budget, whilst maintaining the expected high levels of quality.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Client & Delivery Alignment: Collaborate directly with consultants, customers, and cross-functional teams to steer high-value outcomes across AC's consulting portfolio.


• Expectation & Roadmap Management: Facilitate collaborative story-mapping, sprint planning, and roadmap alignment workshops with consultants and customers to establish clear definitions of success and iterative delivery milestones. Set clear expectations, timelines and measures for success.


• Risk & Impediment Resolution: Proactively identify and resolve systemic blockers, manage project risks, cross-team dependencies, and govern value-stream metrics (such as lead time, cycle time, and burn-up/burn-down dynamics) ensuring budget and project costs are not exceeded.


• Automated Stakeholder Reporting: Architect and deploy automated, AI-driven dashboards to provide real-time updates on program health, velocity, and value metrics for both internal and external stakeholders.


• Escalation Path Governance: Act as the primary escalation point for systemic organizational blockers, driving rapid resolution through collaborative problem-solving and lean governance practices. Actively manage scope and change control, raising change requests where work goes beyond what was agreed.


• Commercial Strategy & Growth:Identify downstream value opportunities within active engagements – such as agile phase extensions, managed services, or product evolutions – collaborating with Consultancy leadership and Sales to co-create iterative, value-focused proposals.


• Agentic AI & Workflow Automation: Implement autonomous AI agents and intelligent automation workflows to streamline program reporting, synthesize retrospective action items, and maximize overall delivery efficiency.


• Agile Coaching & Enablement: Train, coach, and mentor the consultancy team in Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, Lean), building a culture of continuous learning and self-organizing high-performance teams.

Your profile

Qualifications and Skills:

Essential

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical or business field, or equivalent experience


• 7.5 years+ working within teams as a project manager.


• Demonstrable project management skills, especially of delivering complex projects on time and within budget.


• Excellent writing, communication, and interpersonal skills


• Aptitude for problem solving.


• Knowledge of PMO skills and experience of working with a PMO.


• Solid understanding of Agile ways of working (e.g. Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP etc) and experience delivering projects in Agile or hybrid environments.


• Strong budgeting and financial management skills.


• Confidence discussing technical delivery with consultants and customers.

Nice to have

• Knowledge of modern applications and the operations of IT infrastructure such as cloud e.g. AWS, GCloud and Azure; AI e.g. Claude, Rovo and OpenAI; DevOps/AIOps, containerization, ITSM, databases and networks would be advantageous.


• Experience managing projects in Jira and Confluence and the broader Atlassian stack.


• Qualifications in project management e.g., PRINCE2, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), or qualifications from the Association for Project Management (APM) or the Project Management Institute (PMI)


• Knowledge of and qualifications in ITIL

Why us?

Salary and Benefits: £50,000 - £67,500 Per Annum

• 33 days holiday (including bank holidays)


• Private Healthcare


• Dental insurance


• Enhanced Maternity & Paternity plans


• Dedicated ongoing training plan and budget.


• Flexible working hours and environment


• Access to the Electric Car Scheme


• Cycle to Work Scheme


• Pension Scheme


• Top Spec Machine and access to virtual test lab


• Onsite gym, showers, yoga lessons and more.


• Regular company-wide events, team social events

About us

Automation Consultants is a leading agile and DevOps consultancy with a complementary software arm. Our consultancy services dedicated to improving our customers’ business performance through digital and agile transformation and automation of software development processes. Our software, which is sold under the AppFox name, complements these services. We are specialists in Atlassian and AWS, delivering industry-recognised automation solutions, software and managed services. Our customers range from start-ups to global organisations.