Lead Agile Delivery Manager in Leeds

Hippo is recruiting for a Lead Delivery Manager to join our growing consultancy. Delivery Managers ensure that our client's goals are delivered. This means managing the team’s productivity and effectiveness, and working with the team and clients to ensure the project stays on track and delivers quality outcomes to our clients. As a Lead Consultant, specialising in Delivery, you’ll already be an expert in your field, an expert agile practitioner, and a confident line manager of other Delivery Managers. You’ll also be a leader of people and teams and an advocate for user‑centred design approaches. Hippo will provide exciting opportunities to share your expertise with, and influence, clients and team members and to continue to develop you as a leader.

Your role in a nutshell:

• Engage with stakeholders, building delivery plans across multiple teams that align with the product vision.
• Track and understand the progress your team/s are making and communicate this effectively with stakeholders.
• Proactively manage risks, issues and dependencies across multiple teams, unblocking impediments so teams have the best environment to deliver.
• Put in place measurable objectives and results for teams ensuring they understand what they are working towards and can measure their performance.
• Manage people and projects.
• Work closely with the Head of Delivery to provide leadership and direction within the Hippo Delivery Community of Practice.
• Provide delivery leadership in your projects and coaching for less experienced members of your client team.
• Lead diverse, multidisciplinary teams delivering work on behalf of one of our clients, likely to be one of the most significant and high‑profile organisations in the UK.
• Identify and lead in solving operational client challenges as well as technical or digital ones.

Skills and experience that you need:

People are at the centre of everything we do. We’re a diverse and close‑knit community united by a love for solving complex problems for our clients and their users. We take a common sense approach to getting things done. We get things wrong, we learn from experience and we adapt. We stay curious and never stop learning. We don’t need you to have any certificates or qualifications, but we do need to be confident that you have the ability to:

• Lead teams to work effectively in an agile delivery environment, coaching less experienced team members and stakeholders where needed.
• Lead complex deliveries across multiple teams, focussing on delivering quality and value to our clients.
• Lead groups of people that are specialists in their field with confidence, knowing how to guide their short‑term and long‑term priorities.
• Lead, coach and train less experienced delivery managers and be responsible for their career development.
• Take a strategic role in planning and executing a product delivery over the short and long term across multiple development teams.
• Identify and measure value and use evidence of value to drive decision‑making to ensure the user is at the heart of the project and the project teams.
• Build consensus amongst people with different perspectives, with the confidence to make decisive decisions when consensus is not possible.
• Find pragmatic and creative ways to balance constraints to meet user & business needs across complex multi‑team environments.
• Communicate confidently and credibly on behalf of the company and the client.
• Experience in setting measurable objectives using tools such as OKRs.
• Be a senior point of escalation for your project and teams.
• Experience in working on all stages of a product's lifecycle including live product support and product operations, e.g. escalations and incident management.

What makes us great:

As well as a competitive salary which we’re transparent about from the outset, you can also expect a range of benefits:

• Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
• Critical illness cover
• Life assurance and death in service cover
• Volunteer days
• Cycle‑to‑work scheme for the avid cyclists
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
• Season ticket loans
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of: private health cover, private dental cover, additional company pension contributions, additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days), wellbeing contribution, charity contributions, tree planting

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo:

At Hippo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures and socio‑economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive. We actively encourage applications from under‑represented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.

About Hippo:

Hi, we’re Hippo. At Hippo, we design with empathy and build for impact. We do this by combining data‑informed evidence, human‑centred design and software engineering. We're a digital services partner who is genuinely invested in helping our clients thrive as modern organisations. Our delivery methodology is truly agile, from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement to achieve your desired outcomes. We firmly believe that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. We take a human‑centred approach to everything we do because we understand that complex problems require a service design approach. This means understanding how users behave and ensuring our solutions work for them in the real world. Our combination of data, design, and engineering delivers bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. We’re confident in our abilities, authentic in our approach, and passionate about what we do. If you’re looking for a digital services partner that can deliver real results, let us help you build for the future and make a lasting impact.

Hippo Locations:

We are headquartered in Leeds and have offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We’re on the lookout for top talent nationwide but you need to be located within reasonable travelling distance from one of our offices which will be your contracted office location. Given the dynamic nature of a consulting business, you may be required to work on‑site at a Hippo office or at an in/out of town client location for a number of days per week (client dependent) and therefore candidates will need to be open/flexible to travel. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k (please ask for terms and conditions) to help make your move a smooth one.