Store Transformation Development Lead in Eastleigh

Permanent. From £83,000 to £92,000 + Pension + PMI + ShareSave + 6.6 weeks holiday + Company car allowance + Hybrid Working.

Overview

• Reports to: Director of Retail Operations.
• Direct Reports: A team of 3 Store Development Project Managers.
• Location: The role is based in our Store Support Office (SSO) in Eastleigh, Southampton, with flexibility to work from home or B&Q locations. Must be able to work a minimum of 2-3 days a week in SSO Southampton Office. Occasional nationwide store travel & external meetings as required. Occasional weekends on a rotated basis for operational cover.

What is the job?

Step into an exciting new leadership role at the heart of B&Q’s retail transformation. You will be accountable for leading our Store Transformation Development team at the heart of our store transformation programme. You’ll operate as a senior leader connecting strategy, investment decisions, test & learn and operational delivery so stores can make every customer count, every day. You’ll set direction, establish governance and create pace with transformation. You’ll work in close partnership with other functions, but with a clear RACI, to align senior stakeholders around a clear set of priorities and deliver strong outcomes. You will be accountable crafting and delivering the end-to-end store transformation agenda. You’ll be setting the estate-wide roadmap for change, governing prioritisation and preparing the execution of store-ready change at pace. You’ll use innovation, external benchmarking and internal insights to shape solutions that enhance trading, improve customer and colleague outcomes, and are simple to execute in 300+ stores. You’ll set clear success measures, develop and sponsor robust business cases, and influence decisions that balance customer promise, colleague experience and commercial return. Leading a team of Store Development Project Managers, you’ll run end-to-end test & learn cycles and ensure changes land safely, consistently and embed over time. You’ll also deliver against our growth & simplification agenda by reducing cost, improving efficiency and releasing time back to store teams.

Key Accountabilities & Deliverables

• Strategic Thinking and Future Focused Vision: Turn big-picture retail strategy into a clear plan that focuses on what stores need. Prioritise actions that save costs, make work simpler, and improve experiences for colleagues and customers. Lead decision-making with confidence, ensuring changes make a real difference in stores. Guide, motivate and create the conditions for a high performing team to discover needs, develop and test solutions, and prepare store-ready rollouts. Make sure everyone’s work aligns and clear RACIs are in place for effective development. Set clear ways of working, governance and reporting so priorities, dependencies and decisions are visible and progress is maintained at pace.
• Innovation, Continuous Improvement & Directional Leadership: Oversee all trials and tests in stores. Ensure new ideas are feasible, practical, and work well in different store types. Spot risks early and address them using tried-and-tested measures. Be the strong retail voice when working with technology, supply chain and other teams. Make sure solutions fit real store life and are easy for colleagues to use. Keep communications simple and enable clear processes so stores know exactly what to do, and can achieve it consistently.
• Growth Enabler & Customer-Centric Mindset: Lead retail efforts to cut costs, remove complexity and save time in stores to put colleague time back in front of the customer. Turn ideas into business cases, prove the benefits, and make sure savings are tracked and delivered. Identify development opportunities, define problem statements and work collaboratively with relevant teams to deliver business solutions at pace and scale. Oversee management of store development projects from start to finish. Define goals, spot risks, ensure stores are ready and measure benefits. Lead the team to define success measures for each initiative and work with Finance and stakeholders to track benefits, ensuring improvements are sustained and projects are revisited where required.
• Collaboration, Senior Influencing And External Learning: Benchmark store operations against industry leaders, bring in external insight and foster a culture of continuous improvement. Always seeking better ways to serve customers and colleagues, and future-proof the store estate. Check that new ways of working are adopted and improved where needed. Be a strong presenter who can influence senior leaders effectively, build rapport and gain buy in through great storytelling.

Key Business Relationships

• SSO – Strategy, Technology, Logistics, Customer, Technology, Retail Operations
• As required - Kingfisher Group, Finance, HR teams
• External – suppliers and third parties. Plus expectation to maintain strong external relationships with other retailers and industry experts
• Retail – Stores, Regional Managers, Divisional Managers, TradePoint, Field teams

What We Need

• Proven success leading complex change in a transformation or operational improvement context, ensuring solutions land first time and are sustained at scale.
• Experience in leading across different Support Functions by building alignment, removing blockers and unlocking progress.
• Strong ability to turn complex problems into clear, scalable solutions that work nationwide in stores, including those with different store formats and trading cycles.
• Experienced in building and running test & learn approaches (including hypotheses, measures, test design and evaluation).
• Proven success record of converting insight into scalable ways of working and operating models.
• Confident working with data to diagnose issues, quantify opportunity and tell a clear story - balancing pace with rigour.
• Sets clear measures of success and links delivery to commercial outcomes.
• Good financial awareness, including benefits modelling, business case development and cost tracking to ensure value is delivered and sustained.
• Skilled in coaching others, adapting leadership style and building high-trust relationships across the organisation to deliver through others.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills. Able to build confidence with senior leaders, remove barriers and create clear, practical guidance that works for stores.
• Good understanding of retail operations and the realities of delivering change across multiple store formats, regions and trading cycles.
• Customer-centric mindset with an instinct for balancing colleague experience, operational execution and commercial goals.
• Strong programme/project management capability, with experience planning, coordinating and landing multiple initiatives in parallel in a fast-moving environment.
• Proficient in Excel, PowerPoint, Monday.com, Copilot and related project management and collaboration tools.

What's in it for me?

As part of a great team, you’ll be valued for who you are. We’re committed to making B&Q more diverse and representative of the communities we serve, where everyone can feel they belong and have equal opportunities. You will have access to a range of networks that represent our colleagues and allies and help us to continue to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our business. We also recognise that wellness means different things to different people, and we want to help colleagues be at their best and feel well by offering a range of benefits to help you. As well as a competitive salary, our benefits package includes an award-winning pension scheme, bonus, ShareSave options, 6.6 weeks holiday, payroll giving, an Employee Assistance Programme, shopping discounts, colleague wellbeing benefits and lots more!

So we can support you during the application or interview process, please contact recruitment@b-and-q.co.uk for any recruitment adjustments.