Project Manager - Publishing

Part time | 20 hours per week | £50p/h Inside IR35 | 3 months | Fully remote or Farringdon | February ASAP start

We’re supporting a confidential transition programme inside a commissioning and publishing function. This sits outside BAU and is focused on reshaping how teams, processes and governance work while day-to-day delivery continues.

They need a Project Manager who’s comfortable inside publishing, editorial or content operations and who has previously delivered operating model and process change rather than technical or IT projects. This is a short, defined piece of work where you’ll bring structure, pace and clarity while a future state is being put in place behind the scenes.

If you’re at a loose end and can look at taking on this role for 2.5 days p/week fully remote we’d love to hear from you, thanks!

The environment you’ll be working in:

• Publishing operations
• Editorial workflows
• Content commissioning teams
• Commercial and finance stakeholders
• Senior leadership

If you’ve worked in publishing houses, assessment bodies, education, media, membership organisations or professional services environments, this will feel familiar.

What the role involves:

This is centred on operational transition, process clarity and team realignment. You’ll be responsible for:

• Transition planning and control
• Owning the end-to-end transition plan, milestones, dependencies and risks
• Running light-touch governance using RAID logs, decision logs and clear reporting
• Keeping clarity between current state and future state ownership
• Team and resource transition
• Coordinating the movement of junior staff between teams without disrupting delivery
• Managing knowledge transfer, handovers and continuity of work
• Tracking onboarding timelines, resourcing gaps and interim capacity risks
• Process and workflow documentation
• Mapping and documenting current and future editorial and publishing workflows
• Producing SOPs, RACI/accountability matrices and best-practice materials
• Aligning operational processes such as approvals, expenses, invoice routing and governance checkpoints
• Stakeholder coordination
• Acting as the central point between commissioning, editorial, commercial, finance and leadership
• Turning high-level decisions into practical actions for teams
• Maintaining momentum where ownership is unclear or priorities compete

What they’re looking for:

You’ll have experience delivering organisational and operational change in environments such as:

• Publishing operations
• Editorial operations
• Content commissioning
• Education / assessment bodies
• Professional services

You’ll be confident with:

• Operating model / Target Operating Model (TOM) change
• Process mapping and workflow design
• Knowledge transfer and team transition
• Governance frameworks, RAID and decision tracking
• Working through ambiguity and bringing structure to it

This is not a technical Project Manager role. Experience focused on software delivery, infrastructure or cloud projects won’t be relevant here. A focused assignment where you’ll make a visible difference quickly inside a publishing and editorial operations environment undergoing change.