Program Lead in Dunstable

Job Title: Program Lead

Location: Dunstable, UK (Hybrid for 3days/week)

Job Type: Contract or FTC for 5 months

Key responsibilities

• Run the incumbent knowledge-transition gap sessions and keep the knowledge register moving from day one.

• Own the critical path across both squads, the programme gates (feasibility, release candidate, pilot exit, go-live) and the Show & Tell cadence every two weeks.

• Chair the week-3 feasibility gate and either confirm January or reforecast it in the open, before effort is sunk.

• Manage the capacity profile (27 at start, 33 at peak, tapering through pilot and cutover) and the release of people back to their practices on schedule.

• Own risk, dependency and decision management with Whitbread, including the three migration decisions (cut-off, retention, archive) and the task-management data-design decision.

• Be accountable for commercial control: delivery against the committed price and the delivery-tracking metrics that hold it.

Essential skills and experience

• Fifteen years or more in software delivery, with programme-manager accountability for recovery, takeover or turnaround programmes under a fixed date.

• Track record running mixed onsite/offshore teams of 25 or more across parallel workstreams.

• Strong command of Agile at scale (PI planning, multi-squad cadence) and of evidence-based governance and gating.

• Credible in front of a client executive audience; able to give bad news early and hold a plan together under pressure.

Desirable

• Hospitality, retail operations or field-workforce domain exposure.

• Experience of Nintex or low-code platform replat forming programmes.