Digital Planning Manager in City of London

Backed by TDR Capital, BPP (part of Lyceum Education Group) is a leader in the UK higher education and professional training sector, empowering people worldwide to build and transform their careers. Over the past three years, BPP has accelerated its growth through multiple acquisitions and successful entry into the Canadian and Australian markets, establishing a truly international footprint. With a bold digital and technology agenda and a clear vision for internationalisation, BPP is shaping the future of education by combining academic excellence with cutting edge innovation.

As a part of our ongoing growth strategy we are looking for a Digital Strategy Manager to sit at the intersection of technology, strategy, product, and data, acting as a unifying strategic voice across Product, Technology, Data, and the Business Units.

Why work for BPP? It is a great time to join BPP as we have enjoyed a sustained period of growth, offering a wealth of opportunities to our staff, students and clients. There are many more great reasons to join BPP such as:

• Brilliantly, you can study any of our courses for free – be it a professional qualification or full degree.
• With hybrid working available, you’ll be able to split your time between one of our centres and wherever you choose to call home.
• We also provide a generous annual leave entitlement of 30 days, and there’s a rewards package that includes retail discounts and much more.
• Other key benefits include our Group Personal Pension Plan, dedicated private healthcare and dental plans that offer additional assurance to look after you and your family.

What you’ll be doing: You will be a senior individual contributor role within the Strategy & Transformation function, responsible for shaping and scaling shared group-level platforms to create sustainable competitive advantage across business units. As such, you will be responsible for:

• Group-Level Platform Strategy: Design and maintain a group-level platform strategy that enables shared capabilities and creates competitive advantage across business units. Work with Group and BU leaders across Product, Technology, Data, B2C and B2B to identify opportunities for platform leverage and reuse. Shape strategic initiatives focused on enhancing learning experiences, including (but not limited to) simulations, AI-enabled tutoring and coaching, and digital learning platforms. Identify and define opportunities to use data analytics, LLMs, and autonomous or semi-autonomous AI agents to improve platform intelligence, personalisation, and operational efficiency.
• Investment Strategy & Decision Support: Develop clear investment theses for platform initiatives, supporting informed buy vs build vs partner decisions. Ensure that individual platform and technology decisions taken by Product, Tech, Data, or BUs align to an overarching group platform strategy. Tie together disparate initiatives into a coherent, long-term platform roadmap, balancing short-term delivery needs with group-level ambition. Evaluate the strategic and economic value of AI/ML and LLM-enabled capabilities in partnership opportunities, technology solutions, and emerging ecosystems.
• Strategic Translation & Road-mapping: Translate corporate and group strategy into clear, actionable roadmaps for Product, Technology, Data, and Business Unit teams. Ensure ongoing alignment between strategic priorities and technology approach as initiatives progress from concept through execution. Provide strategic challenge and guidance on platform scope, sequencing, and prioritisation. Ensure the roadmap explicitly considers data pipelines, model lifecycle management, AI governance, and scalable deployment of agentic or LLM-based capabilities.
• M&A, Partnerships & Ecosystem Strategy: Create structured frameworks to evaluate acquisitions, platform partnerships, and build decisions from a technology and platform perspective. Support the M&A Director on due diligence activities related to technology stacks, learning platforms, intellectual property, data architecture, and AI capabilities. Assess ecosystem opportunities and risks, including platform dependencies, integration complexity, and long-term scalability.
• Influence & Stakeholder Engagement: Act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders across the Group on platform and technology-enabled strategy. Influence decision-making without formal authority, facilitating alignment across multiple teams with differing priorities. Represent platform strategy consistently across forums, ensuring clarity of intent and rationale behind key decisions.

What we’re looking for: To be successful in this role you will need:

• Demonstrated experience in platform or ecosystem-based businesses, with exposure to shared platforms operating across multiple business units or markets.
• Strong understanding of technology and product principles, including platform architecture, data strategy, and modern software delivery models, without necessarily having held a Product Manager role.
• Practical exposure to AI technologies and deployments, including LLMs, agentic models, AI orchestration frameworks, and ML-powered personalisation.
• Strong interest in emerging AI paradigms (e.g., autonomous agents, retrieval-augmented generation, model fine‑tuning), with the ability to evaluate their feasibility and strategic impact.
• Experience developing platform or product strategy within a corporate, group, or complex organisational environment.
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and align diverse teams around a shared strategic direction.
• Strong analytical, problem-structuring, and strategic thinking skills, with the ability to translate complexity into clear frameworks and recommendations.

As a Disability Confident employer, BPP is committed to providing reasonable adjustments throughout the interview process. Candidates are encouraged to share any adjustment requirements ahead of interview so these can be considered and accommodated. BPP actively promotes equality of opportunity for all with the right mix of talent, skills and potential, and welcomes applications from a wide range of candidates. BPP will select candidates for interview based on their skills, qualifications and experience.

Please note that for those posts that are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, the successful candidate will be required to undertake a DBS check in addition to BPP undertaking any necessary online searches. This is deemed appropriate and necessary from a safeguarding perspective, and in line with BPP safer recruitment practices. BPP reserves the right to amend or withdraw this advertisement at any time prior to the closing date, should we receive a high volume of applications or if business needs change.