Project Operations Manager in Leeds

Are you the operational expert who sees the bigger picture? Join us to be the strategic force behind exceptional project delivery. This person can be based in either our London, Bath, Manchester, Edinburgh or Leeds office on a hybrid working model. At Buro Happold, we pride ourselves on delivering brilliantly coordinated, commercially robust projects that help our clients realise their ambitions. Our UK Project Operations team plays a critical role in making this possible, and we are now looking for a Project Operations Manager to join us in driving operational excellence, commercial insight, and consistent project delivery across our UK business.

About the Role

As a Project Operations Manager, you will be a strategic partner to project teams, Discipline Leaders, Job Leaders and Project Directors, ensuring our operations, data, and systems support exceptional delivery outcomes. You’ll bring structure, rigour and clarity to how we plan, review and monitor our work, enabling stronger decision‑making, clearer forecasting and improved performance across our project portfolio. This is a highly collaborative role, ideal for someone who enjoys working at the intersection of people, processes, and data. You will contribute to strengthening our internal standards, enhancing our systems, and identifying operational and commercial risks before they impact delivery. Ultimately, you will play a vital part in supporting the resilience, efficiency, and long‑term success of our business.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify risks and issues proactively through data analysis and stakeholder engagement, addressing root causes and coordinating solutions across teams.
• Work closely with Project Directors to review project portfolios, ensure accurate system visibility of bids and maintain strong quality assurance across their workload.
• Lead monthly resource and pipeline review meetings with Discipline Leaders and Leadership teams to validate allocations, confirm pipeline inputs and ensure alignment with future workload.
• Lead regular portfolio reviews for Project Directors and Job Leaders requiring enhanced operational support, helping projects stay on track.
• Act as a super user and subject matter expert for business systems and processes, ensuring consistent standards, strong data integrity and efficient workflows.
• Monitor projects delivered at risk, collaborating with Finance, Commercial and Legal teams to escalate issues and support the development of mitigation strategies.
• Support month end job account reviews by providing operational insight, helping interpret financial data, and advising on updates to plans, fee structures, contingencies and change management.
• Deliver onboarding and refresher training on systems, dashboards and operational processes to enhance consistency and capability across the business.
• Support reviews of major projects by providing operational insight, commercial awareness and practical guidance to Project Directors and Finance teams.
• Build strong, collaborative relationships with business services teams, resolving issues quickly to improve operational efficiency and alignment.
• Contribute to strategic commercial and operational risk management through data led insight, industry awareness, and proactive problem solving.

What We Are Looking For:

• Degree or equivalent experience in Engineering, Business Management, Finance, Project Management or a related field.
• Strong numeracy skills with the ability to work confidently with large data sets and present clear, meaningful analysis.
• Ability to understand complex business concepts and communicate them simply to a wide range of stakeholders.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to produce high‑quality, insightful reporting.
• Experience working within engineering, design or professional consultancy environments.
• Strong familiarity with ERP systems (ideally Deltek Vision/Vantagepoint) and skilled in extracting, reviewing and analysing data.
• Advanced MS Excel capability, with Power BI experience beneficial.
• Proven ability to influence operational and commercial outcomes in a complex, multi‑disciplinary environment.
• Demonstrates strong delivery behaviours - organised, efficient, clear in expectations and focused on continuous improvement.
• Shows positive leadership qualities, creating a supportive environment, raising concerns appropriately, and working effectively with different types of people.
• Highly collaborative, supporting colleagues, championing team needs, and contributing specialist knowledge to wider business discussions.
• Technically confident, acting as a system super‑user, actively developing skills, seeking feedback, and ensuring quality across their work and others’.

Why Join Buro Happold?

At Buro Happold, we believe in creating a better, more sustainable world. You’ll be part of a team that values innovation, collaboration, and excellence. We offer a supportive environment where your contributions make a real difference.

What we Offer You:

• Bring your knowledge and expertise to one of the world’s most respected consultancies.
• Hybrid working arrangements.
• Attractive salary and benefits package including, private medical insurance, life assurance and income protection.
• Holiday entitlement of 25 days per annum (exclusive of bank holidays) and flexible holiday arrangements.
• Generous company pension scheme.
• Flexible benefits including cycle scheme, dental insurance, optical cover, travel insurance, season ticket loans, and corporate discounts.
• Enhanced parenthood leave policies.
• 3pm finish on the last Friday of the month.
• A strong commitment to your continuous development. Whatever stage in your career, we have a learning and development programme that will enable and empower you.
• Entitlement to two memberships to professional bodies or subscriptions.
• A commitment to your wellbeing through a comprehensive employee assistance programme and wellbeing activities.
• A supportive and inclusive environment that will welcome you through social and outreach activities from the Young Employees Forum to mentoring.
• An international culture that wherever your career takes you at Buro Happold, you won’t be far from the exceptional.

Apply now and be where exceptional is everywhere. A place for everyone. Buro Happold values individual's flexible approaches to working patterns as an important part of the way you work and achieve balance. We welcome applications from those who are seeking flexibility in their careers. Our exceptional portfolio of projects is the result of the diversity of thought, identities, backgrounds and experiences that shape us. Appreciating each other’s differences is key, we want employees to feel they don’t have to mask elements of their identity to thrive. We are working to change the lack of representation of marginalised groups in the built environment and are particularly keen to hear from anyone who feels they are underrepresented in the industry. We have much to learn from one another. Embracing difference allows us to develop the most innovative and elegant solutions.

Please let us know if there are any adjustments we could make to the application process to make it easier and more comfortable for you. Contact recruitment@burohappold.com so we can work with you to support you throughout your application.