Senior Manager - Operational Excellence in Glasgow

As Senior Manager – Operational Excellence within Business Operations, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping and delivering effective, safe and customer‑focused change across Business Banking. Reporting to the Head of Business Operations, this role sits at the heart of how strategic and tactical change is assessed, governed and embedded within an operation of circa 400 colleagues.

Leading a high‑performing Operational Excellence function, you’ll oversee the design and execution of robust change management and governance frameworks, ensuring that change is delivered smoothly, compliantly and with minimal disruption to customers and colleagues. You’ll work across complex, multi‑journey environments including Start & Set Up, Everyday Banking, and Borrow & Grow, partnering closely with senior leaders, transformation teams and business control functions. This is a senior leadership role requiring strong judgement, influence and commercial acumen. You’ll balance pace with control, driving service improvement, mitigating risk and continuously enhancing customer and colleague experience as the business evolves.

This role sits within Business Operations, supporting Business Banking, and is central to how change is led, managed and embedded across the operation. The Senior Manager – Operational Excellence is accountable for ensuring that all planned change is effectively assessed, governed and implemented in line with regulatory expectations, risk appetite and customer outcomes. You will lead a team of Operational Excellence Operations Managers and their teams. By providing clear leadership, structured frameworks and expert oversight, the role ensures that change enhances performance, strengthens controls and improves experiences for both customers and colleagues, while safeguarding business resilience.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected. For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at our Glasgow office. If you’re based at our Glasgow office, this will apply from 1 April 2027 and ahead of that there will be a need to regularly connect with colleagues for collaboration events.

You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.

Responsibilities:

• You’ll lead a team of Operational Excellence Operations Managers responsible for overseeing change across Business Operations, ensuring governance, impact assessment and delivery standards are applied consistently.
• On a day‑to‑day basis, you’ll partner with senior stakeholders to prioritise and plan change, balancing strategic objectives with operational readiness and customer impact.
• You’ll provide visible leadership across complex programmes, including integration activity, ensuring risks are identified, mitigated and clearly communicated.
• You’ll also champion the use of insight, data and modern tooling to improve how change is delivered and embedded across the operation.

About you:

• Proven senior leadership experience delivering and embedding change within a large, complex operational environment, ideally within financial services.
• Strong expertise in change leadership, governance and impact assessment across multiple concurrent initiatives.
• Demonstrable experience managing and developing multi‑disciplinary teams, including operational and change specialists.
• Highly effective stakeholder management skills, with experience influencing senior leaders up to Director level.
• Excellent understanding of risk, control and regulatory considerations within change delivery.
• Experience supporting large‑scale transformation or integration programmes.
• Ability to use data, insight and modern tooling to drive informed decision‑making and continuous improvement.

Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role:

• Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind.
• Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand.
• Push for better - We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development.
• Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes.

You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these.

The extras you’ll get:

• 30 days holiday, pro rata.
• Private medical insurance.
• A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement.
• Access to an annual performance-related bonus.
• Training and development to help you progress your career.
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death.
• Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year.

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us. We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.