Programme Manager - ERP & Data Transformation in Taunton

We are looking for a Project Manager to join our Digital Transformation Team. The role will lead the end‑to‑end delivery of a major ERP digital transformation programme and the implementation of a new organisational Data LakeHouse. This role is responsible for ensuring these programmes achieve their strategic outcomes, modernise business processes, establish a single source of truth for data, and enable improved decision‑making across the Group. Furthermore, we are looking for someone with experience in delivering ISO27001 across IT Systems and Services. The postholder will drive programme governance, stakeholder engagement, risk management, supplier coordination, and adoption planning to ensure the transformation is delivered on time, within budget, and to a high quality. Furthermore, we are seeking an experienced individual with significant expertise in rolling out our digital, data driven, transformation projects gaining insight across a diverse organisation.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the planning, mobilisation, and delivery of the ERP replacement programme and Data Lake implementation.
• Define programme scope, budgets, roadmap, milestones, and key deliverables in collaboration with senior leaders and solution partners.
• Establish and maintain strong programme governance, reporting, RAID management, and alignment to organisational strategy.
• Act as solution owner for continual improvement and platform expansion.

Stakeholder & Business Engagement

• Act as the primary contact for internal and external stakeholders across all functional areas (Finance, HR, Procurement, Curriculum, Digital Services, Data Teams).
• Facilitate workshops to gather requirements, validate processes, and support organisational change.
• Ensure business readiness for new systems, data models, processes, and ways of working.
• Co‑ordinate training and support workshops.

Delivery & Implementation

• Oversee configuration, integration, testing, and change activities in partnership with vendors and internal technical teams.
• Manage data migration plans, quality standards, and validation cycles across multiple legacy systems.
• Coordinate development of the Data Lake architecture, ingestion pipelines, governance frameworks, and analytics enablement.
• Ensure interoperability between the ERP, Data Lake, and other enterprise platforms.
• Strong data reporting and insight background leveraging process automation and AI.

Risk, Compliance & Quality

• Identify and manage programme risks, issues, and dependencies, ensuring mitigation actions are in place.
• Ensure compliance with data protection, audit, and security standards (preferably ISO27001).
• Monitor delivery quality and ensure solutions meet functional and non‑functional requirements.
• Manage programme budgets, forecasts, and procurement activities.
• Oversee third‑party suppliers, ensuring delivery against contractual commitments.
• Evaluate change requests, statements of work, and vendor performance.

Change Management & Adoption

• Work with Communications, HR, and functional leaders to deliver change, training, and adoption plans.
• Support cultural and behavioural change needed for digital transformation.
• Develop training plans, user documentation, and post‑go‑live support arrangements.

Success Measures

• Gaining business case approval of Programmes.
• ERP solution fully deployed, adopted, and delivering measurable business improvement.
• Data Lake operational with high‑quality, well‑governed data pipelines.
• Compliance with project timelines, budgets, and reporting standards.
• High levels of stakeholder confidence and organisational readiness.
• Demonstrable uplift in data usage, reporting quality, and decision‑making capability.

The Impact of the Role

This role is central to improving how the College Group uses data. Your work will:

• Enable accurate, timely statutory and operational reporting.
• Improve visibility of performance and business outcomes.
• Reduce manual data handling and spreadsheet dependency.
• Increase automation and reliability across core systems.
• Strengthen confidence in data quality and governance.
• Support evidence‑based decision making at all levels of the organisation.

Growth & Development

As a Programme Manager, you’ll be encouraged to:

• Contribute to architectural discussions and roadmap planning.
• Support the evolution of our Data Strategy towards a more structured, layered data platform.
• Propose improvements to data tooling and engineering practices.
• Mentor junior colleagues where appropriate.

You’ll have autonomy, ownership, and the opportunity to help shape how data engineering evolves within the organisation - while being supported by an experienced technical team.

Qualifications / Skills / Knowledge / Qualities

The success of UCS College Group rests on a very strongly felt and shared set of values which determine its strategic direction. The successful candidate must share our values of student‑centredness, equality of opportunity and parity of esteem for staff and students. Staff must enjoy working within the team philosophy of the College and working collaboratively. At UCS College Group, we are:

• Friendly and welcoming.
• Highly responsive to learner, employer, and community needs.
• Passionate and excited about learning.
• Innovative and creative.
• Professional and enterprising.
• An inclusive organisation.
• Aspiring to the highest standards.

The following criteria are used to shortlist applicants and assess candidates. Please show evidence of how you meet these criteria in your application.