Migration Approach & Dress Rehearsal Lead in London

Location: London (hybrid, minimum 12 office days per month), with occasional travel to another UK site.

About the Opportunity

Our client, a leading UK retail bank, is mobilising a dedicated Customer and Product Migration workstream to deliver a large-scale, high-profile migration of millions of customers and products onto a new platform. The programme is customer-centred and fast-paced, with a strong focus on limiting customer friction and delivering a controlled, well-evidenced migration.

The Role

You will lead the design and controlled evolution of the customer and product migration approach and define and lead a progressive dress rehearsal strategy. You will work closely with Technology, Operations, Product, Risk, Compliance and the wider business, and sit at the centre of the programme’s critical path.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the strategic design of the migration approach, including objectives, key results and critical success factors, principles and guardrails, scope and segmentation, wave structure, sequencing and timeline.
• Take the agreed wave design and run with it, keeping it updated as the programme evolves.
• Define the detailed dress rehearsal blueprint, setting the objectives, activity scope and data scope for each rehearsal.
• Define the end-to-end cutover process and timeline for each migration event, and coordinate detailed cutover runbooks.
• Identify end-to-end customer and operational impacts across products and channels (branch, contact centre, digital and operations).
• Establish the operational readiness framework, including entry/exit criteria and the Go/No-Go assessment and decision process.
• Design and operate the Control Tower and War Room arrangements for rehearsals and live migration events, including forums, roles and escalation routes.
• Define the post-migration aftercare and hypercare approach.
• Support the Migration Operating Committee and working groups, and maintain the integrated critical-path migration plan.
• Support regulatory submissions and assurance activity, ensuring decisions, customer outcomes, readiness and regulatory commitments remain aligned and evidenced.
• Produce high-quality executive and regulatory materials, and present to senior working groups and forums.
• Lead and support a small, hands-on team, and provide cover across the rehearsal and cutover leadership roles.

About You

• Proven experience delivering large-scale retail banking migrations, with customer volumes in the millions.
• Extensive migration leadership experience.
• Strong experience in customer and product segmentation.
• Experience designing integrated testing and dress rehearsal strategies.
• Wave design and sequencing.
• Entry/exit criteria and readiness assessment.
• Regulatory awareness.
• Senior matrix leadership across business and technology.
• Executive facilitation and communication.
• Structured decision-making and strong judgement under ambiguity.
• The ability to challenge incomplete evidence and drive accountable closure.
• Experience of live events, cutovers or command-and-control environments, with strong incident management and governance skills.

Qualifications

• Required: relevant project management, resilience or testing qualifications.
• Preferred: degree-level education or equivalent work experience.

Personal Attributes

• A proactive, ambitious self-starter who is comfortable getting their hands dirty from day one.
• A strong people person with the gravitas to influence senior stakeholders.
• Resilient and committed, able to work under significant time pressure in a demanding, high-energy environment.
• Delivery-focused and pragmatic, with a bias for pace and outcomes.

What’s on Offer

• A senior role on a highly visible, strategic programme.
• Competitive salary, car allowance and a comprehensive benefits package.
• A collaborative, dedicated programme environment with strong senior sponsorship.
• Hybrid working, with close access to product, customer and technology teams.