Delivery Lead in London

Howden is a collective - a group of talented and passionate people all around the world. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mind-set, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 22,000 employees spanning over 100 countries. Our people are our biggest asset as well as our largest shareholder group and are everything that makes us unique; our inclusive culture, the quality service we offer our clients, and our continued growth, all come from our people-first approach. There’s no such thing as individual success. We all need to play our part, contributing our skills and experience to make a true difference.

Howden are embarking on a number of strategic systems and technology transformation initiatives for its Specialty Business unit and regions across the globe. The Delivery Lead will be responsible for overseeing the delivery of broking platform solutions/initiatives under the Specialty umbrella. The Delivery Lead will report into the Howden Specialty Chief Technology Officer.

Role Overview

The Delivery Lead will manage and be responsible for the end‐to‐end delivery of broking solutions, integrations, and systems, including working closely with change management, product owners and business transformation colleagues to roll out, embed, and drive broking platform adoption. This role requires deep expertise in working with hybrid in‐house and outsourced vendor teams delivering enterprise software implementations. Strong experience with waterfall, agile and hybrid delivery frameworks and ways of working is desired, along with delivery governance, financial management, and experience with broking or underwriting policy administration platforms being a bonus. The ideal candidate will have excellent senior stakeholder management skills, vendor management experience, and will take over end‐to‐end delivery ownership, aligning and working with a third‐party/consultancy implementing configuration and internal delivery teams responsible for integrations and data migrations.

Key Responsibilities

• Facilitate Agile ceremonies: Lead PI planning, sprint planning, daily stand‐ups, reviews, and retrospectives to ensure effective team collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Own the software delivery lifecycle: Plan, build, and release working software with developers, testers, product owners, and other stakeholders.
• Accountable for planning and delivering stakeholder workshops to investigate user requirements, complex problems, or issues and capture key insights.
• Engage and collaborate with programme and project managers working on dependent programmes and projects.
• Develop and maintain detailed delivery plans to guide the business and project teams, revising based on changing needs and requirements.
• Manage the preparation, documentation, and maintenance of delivery requirements, including detailed analysis and mapping of business processes.
• Oversee and be accountable for the end‐to‐end project lifecycle for projects.
• Monitor and manage key aspects of projects (e.g., resourcing, time, quality, costs, risks, and issues) and ensure resolution of issues and risks.
• Compile and submit project status reports to management and wider stakeholder groups.
• Produce and maintain project RAID logs.
• Deliver high‐quality outputs and capabilities to scope, budget, and timeline, with effective stakeholder management at all levels of the business, and ongoing measurement of business benefits.
• Manage project scope, timeline, and budget: Ensure projects are delivered on time, within budget, and meet stakeholder requirements.
• Remove impediments: Identify and resolve obstacles that hinder team progress or delivery quality.
• Stakeholder management: Build and maintain relationships with internal and external stakeholders, ensuring expectations are managed and met.
• Coach and mentor: Guide teams on Agile practices, foster a culture of trust, transparency, and accountability, and encourage open communication.
• Continuous improvement: Identify process bottlenecks and inefficiencies, implement changes, and promote Agile best practices and tools (e.g., automated testing, CI/CD).
• Align delivery with business goals: Ensure software delivery supports strategic objectives and delivers value to customers.

Skills and Abilities

• Strong business and systems analysis and design skills, with the ability to develop strategies and organize tasks.
• Excellent documentation, communication (written and verbal), and presentation skills, especially the ability to tailor messages to senior stakeholders and delivery teams.
• Ability to develop clear, concise, and compelling storylines for executive presentations.
• Experience working in a financial services (ideally insurance) environment.
• Strong agile delivery skills (Scrum), ideally with some scaled agile experience and the ability to work in an environment with mixed delivery methodologies (i.e., traditional waterfall, agile, etc.).
• Strong IT project and programme management skills, ideally with experience in technical delivery estimation, planning, and management.
• Good understanding and awareness of IT service management (e.g., ITIL).

Knowledge and Experience

• Proven project management experience, delivering complex insurance policy administration system implementations.
• Experience in delivering finance transformation projects.
• Proven ability to lead, contribute to, or review the output of business and systems analysis to inform solution design and delivery.
• Strong skills in delivering in complex IT environments (multi‐geography, multi‐supplier, outsourced environments) involving geographically distributed delivery teams comprising internal resources, third‐party suppliers, and outsourced delivery teams.

Seniority level: Mid‐Senior level

Employment type: Full‐time

Job function: Information Technology

Industries: Technology, Information and Internet