Programme Manager in London

Location: London

About Springer Nature:

Springer Nature opens the doors to discovery for researchers, educators, clinicians and other professionals. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals, platforms and technology solutions reach millions of people. For over 180 years our brands and imprints have been a trusted source of knowledge to these communities and today, more than ever, we see it as our responsibility to ensure that fundamental knowledge can be found, verified, understood and used by our communities – enabling them to improve outcomes, make progress, and benefit the generations that follow.

About Department:

Join the Portfolio & Governance Office of our CIO, where our mantra is simple yet powerful: "Do the right things. Do things right." Our team is dedicated to building a strategic, consistent, and transparent approach to how information and technology empower our entire enterprise. We focus on two essential objectives: fostering a unified vision for IT across the organization and ensuring our IT organization consistently delivers value through efficiency and clarity.

About Team:

Join our Portfolio & Project Office (PPO) within the Portfolio & Governance Office, where we provide the essential backbone for strategic alignment and effective project execution across the organization. This team is responsible for ensuring that our project portfolio not only meets the organization’s immediate needs but also aligns with long-term business goals. With a focus on portfolio governance, demand management, and business outcome measurement, our team plays a central role in resource optimization, risk management, and continuous improvement across initiatives.

In the team, you’ll have the chance to drive impactful projects from concept to execution, implementing frameworks that foster transparency, enhance decision-making, and prioritize value creation. This is a team where collaboration, innovation, and accountability come together, fostering a culture where every project aligns with our core objectives and strategic vision.

About Role:

Job summary: Portfolio & Project Office - Your Opportunity to Shape Strategic Impact. Join our Portfolio & Project Office at Springer Nature Technology, where we provide the essential backbone for strategic alignment and effective project execution across the organization. As part of our team you’ll have the chance to drive impactful projects from concept to execution and help orchestrate the health of our wider portfolio, implementing frameworks that foster transparency, enhance decision-making, and prioritize value creation.

If you’re ready to embrace challenges and contribute to an evolving, high-performing project environment, we welcome you to apply and be part of a team committed to excellence in delivering strategic value across the enterprise.

As a Programme Manager, you will lead large and strategically significant projects across different teams and departments developing our digital customer-facing applications, internal business systems as well as crucial governance, risk and compliance programmes of work. You will be coordinating cross-functional teams, managing resources, and driving initiatives that align with and support our organisational objectives. You will work with key stakeholders across all parts of the business to understand their requirements and ensure your projects and programmes deliver solutions that meet their needs and you will oversee projects and programmes that are instrumental in transforming how Springer Nature operates, leveraging technology to enhance efficiency and deliver tangible business benefit.

Key Responsibilities:

• Project and Programme Management:
• Start-up, shape, lead and deliver Springer Nature Technology programmes and projects within the agreed time, budget and quality constraints.
• Define, document and track programme/project objectives, scope, success criteria, and deliverables.
• Identify, assess, and manage programme risks and issues, implementing mitigation strategies as needed.
• Allocate resources effectively to ensure the successful delivery of programme objectives.
• Monitor resource utilization and address capacity issues proactively.
• Work with product vendors, implementation partners, and internal technology teams to ensure they deliver robust specifications and solutions that meet requirements.
• Where required, undertake RFI and RFP initiatives in order to select the most appropriate 3rd party solution to meet the needs of the business.
• Stakeholder Management:
• Develop and maintain excellent stakeholder relationships on a global basis.
• Act as the primary point of contact for stakeholders, ensuring clear communication and alignment throughout the programme lifecycle.
• Provide regular updates and progress reports to key stakeholders.
• Support the business product owner, in order to ensure that all stakeholders’ needs are taken into account and correctly represented.
• Communicate with stakeholders, in an appropriate format, to ensure that they are provided with the required level of information for decision making, kept well informed of project progress and any potential issues.
• Change and Communications:
• Support change management and develop communication plans, working with change and communications colleagues as required.
• Network with globally distributed stakeholders to keep business knowledge current and be proactive in suggesting business process improvements.
• Challenge the status quo within the business and be proactive in suggesting the best way forward for developing solutions to business problems.
• Manage people-centric change projects in the technology space with a focus on business process efficiency and commercial opportunity.

Experience, Skills & Qualifications:

• Extensive Programme and Project Management Experience:
• Comprehensive experience leading and delivering technology and change projects in a global environment.
• Experience of managing multiple concurrent interconnected or diverse projects.
• Strong project lifecycle knowledge having delivered multiple projects from start to finish.
• Strong understanding of what is required in creating project artefacts.
• Strong analytical and reporting skills.
• Ability to work in a multi-methodology environment.
• Ability to create appropriate level project plans to meet the project need.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to build and maintain relationships at multiple levels.
• Ability to present and communicate technology-led opportunities to the business.
• Experience facilitating teams in gathering and presenting information to clearly communicate technical context to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong collaboration with multi-discipline project teams of various sizes including Developers, UX Designers, Project managers, Business Analysts, and QA.
• Ability to work with a sponsor to set up a piece of work, focus them on building an outcome and defining clearly requirements and constraints.
• Communications and Change Experience:
• Knowledge of organizational change management techniques.
• Strong written, oral communication, interpersonal and presentation skills.
• Excellent oral and written communications skills in English language and experience interacting with both business and IT individuals at all levels of the organisation.
• Flexibility and Resilience:
• Ability to navigate the complexities of an international corporate organisation.
• Proven ability as a results-focused self-starter.
• Sound self-organization and planning skills.
• Ability to be super-organised with the ability to juggle multiple priorities and switch context very quickly.
• Proactive rather than reactive approach to work.

Your qualifications:

You bring a blend of technical expertise, financial acumen, and strategic foresight, ensuring the IT portfolio operates effectively and adds measurable value across the enterprise.

Education and Certifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Information Technology, Business, Finance, or a related field.

Project and Programme Planning:

• Experience of working with Programme Planning tools.
• Experience of creating roadmaps for communicating plans with stakeholders at all levels.
• Experience of OKR and/or Objective setting.
• Experience of Risk and Issue management – identifying mitigation and escalating.

Communication and Storytelling Expertise:

• Proven excellence in written and spoken English.
• Ability to craft compelling narratives around project outcomes that resonate across audiences.
• Powerful storytelling skills and experience in delivering presentations to executive leadership are crucial for this role.
• Complex financial and operational data to drive strategic portfolio decisions.

Tool experience:

• Familiarity with PPM tools and platforms is desired but not a must.

Communication and Leadership Skills:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to convey complex portfolio insights to both technical and non-technical audiences.