Project Manager II in Oxford

Do you enjoy bringing clarity to complex initiatives and helping teams deliver meaningful outcomes?

Are you motivated by working across business and technology teams to drive progress, solve challenges, and deliver value?

About our Team

The DBS Portfolio team provides end-to-end delivery leadership across Elsevier’s core business systems. The team partners with business and technology colleagues across sales, marketing, finance, and operations to translate strategic priorities into effective delivery.

About the Role

The Project Manager II is an individual contributor responsible for independently managing the delivery of one or more technology-enabled projects within the Digital Business Solutions Portfolio. This role is about more than maintaining plans and reporting progress. We are looking for a proactive and pragmatic project manager who takes ownership, creates clarity where there is ambiguity, and builds momentum with appropriate autonomy. You will bring people together around clear outcomes, identify what needs attention, and take the initiative to move delivery forward. When challenges arise, you will work with the team to understand the problem, develop practical options, and drive decisions and actions through to completion. The role requires someone who can work at the appropriate level of detail while maintaining a clear view of the overall outcome. You will build trusted relationships, communicate openly, challenge constructively, establish clear ownership, and support follow-through on agreed commitments. This is a mid-level role for someone who can lead projects with a good degree of independence and use sound judgement to determine when to act, when to seek input, and when wider support is required.

Responsibilities

• Manage the end-to-end delivery of one or more moderately complex projects, defining business case, outcomes, plans, schedules, milestones, and responsibilities.
• Lead cross-functional teams across Product, Engineering, and business functions, while maintaining alignment and managing expectations with senior stakeholders.
• Proactively remove obstacles and manage risks, issues, and dependencies, coordinating mitigation actions and escalating with clear recommendations where necessary.
• Establish meaningful performance measures, analyse project information, and monitor delivery health, taking corrective action when progress moves off track.
• Drive timely decisions and work with functional leads to resolve resource, capacity, and priority constraints.
• Constructively challenge assumptions and ways of working, identifying and implementing practical improvements that strengthen delivery.

Requirements

• Demonstrable experience independently delivering moderately complex technology or software projects from initiation through implementation, with a working knowledge of the software development lifecycle and agile delivery practices.
• Strong leadership, facilitation, influencing, and negotiation skills across multidisciplinary teams and different levels of seniority.
• Sound judgement and problem-solving ability, particularly when working through ambiguity, competing priorities, or changing circumstances.
• Strong analytical capability, including the ability to interpret information and turn it into useful insights and recommendations.
• Clear and adaptable written and verbal communication, alongside confidence using or quickly learning AI-enabled delivery tools.
• Familiarity with change management principles and the people impacts of implementing new systems, processes, or ways of working.

Work in a Way That Works for You

We promote a healthy work/life balance across the organisation. We offer an appealing working prospect for our people. With numerous wellbeing initiatives, shared parental leave, study assistance, and sabbaticals, we will help you meet your immediate responsibilities and your long-term goals.

Working Pattern

Working flexible hours - flexing the times when you work in the day to help you fit everything in and work when you are the most productive.

About the Business

A global leader in information and analytics, we help researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. Building on our publishing heritage, we combine quality information and vast data sets with analytics to support visionary science and research, health education and interactive learning, as well as exceptional healthcare and clinical practice. At Elsevier, your work contributes to the world's grand challenges and a more sustainable future. We harness innovative technologies to support science and healthcare to partner for a better world.

We know your well-being and happiness are key to a long and successful career. We are delighted to offer country specific benefits. Click here to access benefits specific to your location.

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