Head of Technical Program Management - Networks - London, Greater London

Everyone is welcome at M&S. No exceptions. It’s your background, abilities and differences that make you, uniquely you. And when you’re part of M&S, that individuality has the potential to make waves.

M&S are embarking on a multimillion-pound investment in its network infrastructure. We are advertising for several roles who will work with our chosen network provider to both transition from our existing vendor and to transform our network. We are looking to hire a Head of Technical Program Management who will work to lead the third-party team on technical delivery of the new capabilities and connect third party teams into the M&S Digital and Technology teams. The program of transformation has over 30 streams of work which will deliver a transformed network infrastructure that will power M&S retail and digital growth for the future.

In the role you will need to have a strong technical knowledge – ideally in networks. Plus be comfortable working in a matrixed environment with Engineers and third parties networked into you.

What’s in it for you:

• 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household after completing your probationary period.
• Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days.
• Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.
• A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
• A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.
• Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.
• Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal policies, providing support and flexibility for your family.
• Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support for all colleagues including access to our 24/7 Virtual GP and PAM Assist to support you and your family.
• A charity volunteer day to support a charity or cause you're passionate about through a dedicated day away from work.

The Head of Technical Program Management is the glue of engineering, product and business strategies - owning Programmes of work of significant visibility and complexity with broad cross-organisational and/or deep architectural impact. You are accountable for end-to-end technical delivery and performance across domains within the organisation and external suppliers, utilising your expertise in handling constraints, improving quality or removing blockers.

The mission is to harness agile ways of working and embed our strategic ambitions to successfully deliver sophisticated change at scale. The key to the success of this role is simplifying the complex processes into simple, straightforward solutions and building positive, trusting relationships through consistent delivery of solutions and effective communication in-line with the M&S Way.

More specifically, the Head of Technical Program role is the embodiment of ‘own it, and get it done’ with key responsibilities as follows:

• Plan, own and deliver highly complex and multi-disciplinary initiatives, collaborating with senior leaders to align strategic goals and drive a customer first mind-set in Technology.
• Create roadmaps and objectives and key results alongside the Head of Product & Head of Engineering to ensure alignment to strategic ambitions for M&S including the Technology Strategy.
• Facilitate continuous refinement and prioritisation of initiatives working alongside Product, Engineering and Business leaders.
• Drive data driven decisions through metrics and regular reporting to provide visibility creating a culture of transparency.
• Develop trusted relationships with partners across business areas using deep and relevant technology experience to simplify sophisticated technology issues.
• Manage and maintain executive relationships with vendors and other external partners to ensure successful delivery of outcomes through innovation and thought leadership.
• Build a culture of trust and transparency with internal and external customers, domains and teams.
• Own and drive domain health, security and stability through the DevOps culture and process.
• Establish empowered, accountable impactful teams through coaching and mentoring. Operate as a servant leader to create a culture of continuous improvement demonstrating external findings.
• Accountable for the technology budget and driving value for money in the hardest working, most efficient way.
• Educate partners across the business to understand and enable product ways of working.
• Proactively evaluate industry, technology and delivery trends to demonstrate external findings and drive improvements internally.
• Ensure the health and existence of the TPM community while contributing through sharing lessons learnt and driving consistency across the organisation.
• Actively contribute to learn and grow within the TPM Community.

Who you are:

• Extensive experience delivering large-scale initiatives across multiple product functions and domains.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, proactive can do demeanour and ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non‐technical individuals including director level.
• Track record of providing Technical leadership across domains, product groups and Program management during all phases of software development from ideation to realising value, demonstrating critical thinking and thought leadership.
• Strong solid understanding/experience of Agile/Scaled Agile practices including Scrum, Kanban and DevOps.
• Highly diligent professional with excellent leadership and coaching skills in lean agile practices.
• Experience in defining and handling key achievements and outcome led Product/Program delivery.
• Strong financial and commercial foresight including experience leading budgets and being responsible for contractual negotiations.

Desirable:

• Experience in multiple Agile Project/Portfolio Management tools e.g. Jira, Monday.com.
• Experience using facilitation techniques, thinking techniques, coaching and learning frameworks.
• Experience of engineering practices like BDD, XP and Agile Testing, Continuous Integration and Continuous delivery.
• Prior experience working in the Retail Industry.
• Project Management, Agile or Scaled Agile certification.
• Strong facilitation skills to articulate clear outputs, drive teams or individuals towards specific desirable outcomes.
• Evidence of creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We’re redefining, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We’re redefining how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you’d benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don’t hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.