Project Manager

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world. JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally. We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people‑led, innovative and customer‑focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

As a Project Manager in the Group Transformation team, you will be working on complex and high‑priority initiatives across the JD Group to support change delivery and unlock the JD Strategy and you will be responsible for the end‑to‑end delivery of your projects. You will lead the delivery of our most complex projects as part of a larger team with a Programme Manager and other Project Managers. You will work closely with colleagues, stakeholders, programme teams, operational & technology teams, and suppliers to deliver your projects to time, cost, and quality. Therefore, help the business implement our strategy and further enhance our market‑leading customer offering. Quality and agility will underpin everything you do, helping you deliver faster to market and improve the customer experience. You will be a high‑performing, highly engaged colleague passionate about project management and delivering change, delivering great results with a focus on their own personal development.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage your project(s), ensuring that intended outcomes are achieved on time, within budget, and to the agreed quality standards.
• Ensure project outcomes, objectives and scope are clearly understood, defined, and documented.
• Establish and maintain the appropriate governance structure for your project(s) that controls delivery and ensures that benefits are realised and outcomes are met to time, cost, and quality.
• Demonstrate commercial awareness and project assurance.
• Maintain detailed and high‑quality documentation, adhering to PMO requirements.
• Create accurate and timely Project Status Reports and Steering Committee reports, ensuring timely updates, keeping stakeholders informed of progress and transparency.
• Create and maintain accurate project plans, dependencies, schedules, risks, and issue logs.
• Identify all stakeholders and create an engagement plan to ensure effective communication.
• Ensure that your project delivers sustainable change across the business functions and teams that the programme impacts.
• Work closely with Business Analysts to ensure requirements are captured and validated at an appropriate level.
• Work closely with third‑party suppliers to ensure projects are delivered as expected and manage timelines and priorities accordingly.
• Ensure actions and decisions are captured and communicated to stakeholders appropriately.
• Manage scope and ensure that changes are logged, impact assessed and managed if approved.
• Identify and communicate any risks and dependencies that may affect the key deliverables & milestones and identify mitigation measures.
• Commercially manage your project(s) ensuring costs and benefits are fully understood, tracked, and reported against.
• Complete Post Implementation Reviews to ensure benefits are maintained and learnings are captured.
• Coping with pressure and setbacks: The ability to work productively in a high‑pressure environment, keep emotions under control during difficult situations, balance the demands of work, maintaining a positive outlook, and handle feedback well and learn from it.
• Adapting and responding to change: The ability to adapt to changing circumstances, accept new ideas and initiatives, adapt interpersonal style to suit different people and situations, showing respect and sensitivity towards cultural and religious differences.
• Persuading, influencing and stakeholder management: The ability to build and sustain the support to achieve intended outcomes and resolve conflict by making a strong personal impression on others, gaining clear agreement and commitment from others, providing relevant and timely communications that support the successful delivery of the initiative and drive decisions.
• Initiation and Planning: The ability to define, document and manage the objectives, scope, outcomes, deliverables, cost, resource, risks, issues, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and benefits of an initiative, create a project plan considering any dependencies and critical path activities, manage time effectively, identify and organise resources (internal and external) needed to accomplish tasks, deliver the plan, build a team that operates effectively together to deliver the intended outcomes, and monitor performance against deadlines and milestones.
• Management of controls, deciding and initiating action: The ability to drive decision‑making with key stakeholders, take full responsibility for actions, projects, and people in the team, identify and monitor risks to plan, implement appropriate responses to those risks, respond to issues that affect the initiative, manage variations and change requests in a controlled way.

Professional Experience

• 3–7+ years delivering cross‑functional projects with accountability for scope, budget, and schedule.
• Experience working with cross‑functional teams and stakeholders.

Skills

• Budgeting and resource planning.
• Risk management and issue resolution.
• Leadership: Ability to lead and motivate teams.
• Communication: Strong written and verbal skills for stakeholder engagement.
• Time management: Prioritising tasks and managing deadlines.
• Problem‑solving: Navigating challenges and making informed decisions.
• Negotiation and conflict resolution.

Benefits

We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff discount on JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.